


you could come and save me (try to chase the crazy right out of my head)

by ElvisHasLeftTheBuilding



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Exile, F/M, Forgiveness, Friendship/Love, Gerald is a dog in this folks, Healing, Healthy Relationships, Implied Foursome - F/M/M/M, Inaccurate milestones of growing dogs, M/M, Multi, POV Tony Stark, Post-Civil War (Marvel), Post-Secret Invasion (Marvel), Stony starts at the end of chapter 1, Threesome - F/M/M, scapegoating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-27 12:09:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20948105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElvisHasLeftTheBuilding/pseuds/ElvisHasLeftTheBuilding
Summary: On the other side of the world, a butterfly flaps its wings.In New York, Sharon Carter dreams and memories flit through her mind in sharp little pieces – the panicked screams of the crowd, the shoving and the trampling as they flee to relative safety, a gun with the barrel lit up red, her finger pressing down on the trigger.Steve’s face as he dies: blood splattering his cheeks, brows creasing and eyes widening with a mixture of shock and pain, his mouth falling open, then going slack, eyes glazing over –...Tony Stark is exiled from the country Post-SHRA/Secret Invasion (A lot of dialogue, a lot of background, a lot of context). A year after that, Commander Steve Rogers comes looking for him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own Marvel or any characters.
> 
> This is my first time. Be gentle.

On the other side of the world, a butterfly flaps its wings.

In New York, Sharon Carter dreams and memories flit through her mind in sharp little pieces – the panicked screams of the crowd, the shoving and the trampling as they flee to relative safety, a gun with the barrel lit up red, her finger pressing down on the trigger.

Steve’s face as he dies: blood splattering his cheeks, brows creasing and eyes widening with a mixture of shock and pain, his mouth falling open, then going slack, eyes glazing over –

Sharon’s face creases and she stirs, turning on her side, long blonde hair sprawling over her pillow. Cold sweat beads on her forehead. She doesn’t wake, not yet. But her eyeballs roll wildly behind her half-lidded eyes as her dreams turn violent.

The cold metal biting into the flesh of her wrists, restraining them above and behind her. Sprawling at an awkward angle – too steep to lie on her back and not slide down until she’s dangling by the arms; the tilt of the machine at such an incline that she has to use her legs to support herself but remains unable to stand up completely. Her stomach aches at the point where she’s driven a dagger into herself, the stiches tugging at her skin. Zola on her right and the Red Skull at her left.

Then the golden portal – the glowing doorway –

_What am I seeing?_

_Something alive?_

_What is… is it growing…?_

_No._

_NO!_

Sharon convulses, gasping, her eyes full of horror as they snap open. She’s alone. Her bedroom is humid, suffocating, the dark blue curtains drawn over the brightening daylight. Her pajamas stick unpleasantly to her sticky skin. The bedding is tangled tightly around her hips. Her hand drifts down to her abdomen, tracing the contours of her scar. The skin is unbroken, but the nightmare has left her with a phantom pain centered around her old injury.

She’s awake and she remembers.

And she _realizes –_

…

Steve Rogers is resurrected a week before the Skrull Invasion.

The people who glimpse him during the battle call it a miracle, call it divine intervention, call it a sign from God. The Sentinel of Liberty, the Living Legend, the American Dream rising from the dead and beating back the alien armada at their doorstep. News crews have the headline circulating globally in minutes: CAPTAIN AMERICA ALIVE!

It’s Steve Rogers who kills Queen Veranke.

All the networks cover it live. Everyone on the planet sees it.

Few Americans will ever forget where they were when Captain American was shot down at the courthouse steps.

No one on the entire planet will ever forget what they were doing when Captain America, strong and righteous and good, epitome of honor and personification of justice, strikes down the mastermind behind the Secret Invasion.

_We’ve seen the world according to Nick Fury…_

_We’ve seen the world according to Tony Stark…_

_Steve Rogers, Captain… I am asking you to answer the call._

_I… serve at the honor of my President._

Norman Osborne never comes into power. He and his Thunderbolts fade back into obscurity.

But this is where things remain the same:

The people of the world are angry and frightened. They are thirsting for someone to blame and howling for blood. They are disillusioned and disenchanted by the SHRA, the Mighty Avengers, the 50-State Initiative – the elaborate and over-embellished window dressing put forth to camouflage the crumbling and ramshackle structure that is the world’s sorry excuse for global security.

The government of the United States needs a scapegoat.

...

“We sentence you to exile.”

_Exile_

One word. Two syllables. It rings through Tony Stark’s ears, drilling deep into his skull, rattling his teeth. He can feel his heart hammering in his throat and ears, as if he’s just done a marathon. His expression remains blank and unreadable. His hands don’t shake as he folds them in his lap, smoothing over the crisp lines of his Tom Ford suit.

The verdict from SCOTUS (unfortunately nicknamed) isn’t necessarily unforeseen. But it’s still a blow. It’s ending the way of life as Tony knows it. It’s taking away everything he has – his livelihood, the Iron Man armor, his company, his properties, his money, his citizenship, and even his friends… those little that he has left, which he can count on one hand and have three remaining.

Not his reputation, though. That has long been fed into a paper shredder machine and the tattered remains flushed down the drain. The smear on his formerly good name – Tony takes full responsibility for.

Camera flashes blind his eyes as the press starts firing questions at him. But he can’t hear whatever it is they’re bellowing through the dull roaring in his ears, only see their mouths working mutely, their microphones being thrust forward aggressively.

Tony thinks he’s in shock.

He’s standing on a coastal shore, watching a meteor roll across the skies and plummet into the ocean, feeling the shockwave reverberate through the earth and salt water, up the soles of his feet, shaking the bones in his body until he falls apart like a poorly constructed straw scarecrow. He’s watching the tide recede meteorically (Ha! _Meteor_ically!) knowing what’s coming but still rooted to the spot, watching and waiting for the tsunamic wave to swallow him whole.

He’s an observer inside his own body, a puppet dancing on strings, a passenger in his own car with someone else at the wheel – not Happy, because Happy is dead, and that’s Tony’s fault as well.

Tony watches himself rise smoothly to his feet. Two SHIELD agents moving over to flank him, ostensibly to escort him to a prisoner transport van and then over the borders of America… But these particular two agents, Tony knows, and he knows well.

Dum-Dum Dugan and Maria Hill. His erstwhile deputies when he was still Director of SHIELD. Both of them has made no secret of the fact that they think he was the last person who should be leading an elite law-enforcement spy organization (which Tony privately agrees); has undermined him every time they think he’s made a wrong judgement (which is to say, all his judgements); Maria seems to think she would have made a better director herself; and Dugan has a habit of publicly, loudly, and overtly compared Tony unfavorably to Nick Fury.

Despite that, there they stand, Maria Hill on one side of Tony and Dum-Dum Dugan on the other, as they have so many times before in vastly dissimilar circumstances, when Tony was their superior and not a prisoner. The reporters try to swarm, but Maria and Dugan clear the way to the exit with liberal use of elbows and sneaky applications of feet against shins. Tony ducks his head and permits himself a ghost of a grin.

Howard Stark had been a shitty father – emotionally negligent at best and just down right abusive at worst – but he’d at least taught Tony a few things right.

_Stark men are made of iron._

_Never let them see the damage._

Tony’s face is expressionless. His shoulders don’t slump. His spine stays straight. His movements aren’t stiff. Even disgraced and publicly discredited, he will be damned if he lets anyone (the nine justices with their alternatingly accusing glowers and poorly-hidden pity; or the paparazzi swarming like hungry piranhas, scenting blood; the crowd packed into the spectator’s area rambunctiously cheering at his fall from grace) even a glimpse of his weakness.

Tony Stark has just had the floor yanked right out from under his feet, but no one would know it just by looking at him. His countenance screams boredom and maybe slight disappointment, like he’s done nothing more exciting than venture from his gilded Tower and walk down the street to the bodega only to be told that they’ve run out of his favorite flavor of fruit juice.

The walk to egress seems to stretch out longer than should be physically possible. The Supreme Courtroom is a grandiose chamber – all marble and tall, elegant columns; lacquered surfaces and polished wood – designed to strike fear into the hearts of guilty, lesser man.

Every second Tony spends in this room unravels his fraying composure.

Unable to bear it any longer, he lets his gaze drift over the spectators.

It takes him an embarrassingly long time to spot them.

Rhodey and Pepper, he knows, are waiting outside the courthouse. His two best friends, loyal to the end, will stay with him until he crosses the border. And since his two best friends are also his _only_ friends, he doesn’t presume to see familiar faces amidst the crowd.

Stupid of him, really.

At minimum, he really should have prepared for Steve, seeing as his former teammate is the reason Tony isn’t being escorted to an execution or a prison cell on the Raft right this instant.

It was Commander Steve Rogers, surfing the crest on the wave of his popularity as savior of the planet, wielding his newfound political clout and power as America’s top cop with all of his usual subtlety – and the subtlety of a man who goes around dressed in the colors of America’s flag, is of course, close to nonexistent – who browbeats and hectors until Tony’s probable sentence goes down from execution, to life imprisonment, then finally to exile.

Tony doesn't trust it.

It’s not like Steve at all. Steve Rogers is quick to anger and slow to forgive and forget. Tony would have put money on him leading the charge to see Tony properly punished for criminal negligence, instead, Rogers does _this_.

Given the fact that the second to last time Tony has seen Steve before his death was when they were beating the snot out of each other in the middle of New York city, buildings collapsing and vehicles going up in flames all around them, the 180 degree U-turn Steve’s attitude has taken is downright alarming and had Tony questioning whether anyone has checked him for signs of mind-control or Skrull impersonation.

_Why_ is Steve doing this?

Is it because of some twisted sense of debt? Does Steve think this is what Tony would have done for him? Well, if so, the Commander’s going to be majorly disappointed. Tony would have stepped in to stop Steve from receiving the death penalty, but everything else – including life imprisonment – would have been fair-game.

Tony Stark has never claimed to be a good man.

Steve is already looking at him. Tony meets his gaze, vividly azure even when they’re standing at opposite ends of the courtroom, and his shoes scuff against the polished marble floor, his mask of equanimity cracking open just a sliver. Dugan grips his elbow, discreetly steadying him.

Commander Roger’s (God, Tony still can’t get use to thinking that) uniform is a darker blue, a large white star in the center of his chest against white stripes wrapping around his torso, the only color a line of red down the outside of his legs. He looks intimidating, radiating a palpable sense of disapproval and mutiny. He makes no attempt to hide his displeasure, and around him, an expanding circle of previously celebrating onlookers grow subdued.

Tony doesn’t miss the irony of their situation. Not even a year ago, Steve was assassinated on his way to a trial he never made it to. Now, it’s Tony who’s just had his sentence read to him, who’s being vilified and disparaged by the public, whose crimes have been weighted and judged.

There’s a part of Tony that finds that morbidly funny.

Now that Tony is looking, other familiar figures jump out at him: Peter Parker, Clint Barton, Thor as his mortal alter ego Don Blake. Tony is at a loss. Why are they here? Tony’s done a lot of morally dubious things, made a lot of bad choices, hurt a lot of people in his checkered life. But arguably, in terms of personal betrayal, Peter and Thor top the chart of _People Tony Stark Has Fucked Over_. And the last time they spoke, Clint has made it very clear that he considers whatever friendship existed between them over.

_Have they come to gloat?_ Tony thinks, stomach sinking. But no. None of them look gloating or vindicated. They don’t look happy at all, actually. They don’t, strictly speaking, look _un_happy either. If Tony has to, he would classify their profiles on the varying spectrum of conflicted.

Carol Danvers, wearing a white jacket and an impressive scowl. Simon Williams standing next to her, red shades obscuring his expression. Natasha Romanoff, almost unrecognizable in a short blonde wig. Jarvis, looking somber.

No.

Tony cannot do this. He cannot face them. It’s easier to envision them all hating him, one clean break and that’s it. He finds now that it’s more excruciating to be presented with hope at a time and place when he has little to lose anymore, to hang in that ambiguous period of suspension, waiting for his former teammates to make up their minds about whether or not they hate him.

He needs to leave.

He _wants_ to leave.

There’s at least one aspect of his punishment that suits him just fine.

America doesn’t want Tony Stark.

That’s fair.

Tony Stark doesn’t want America either.

...

The prisoner transport van drives over a speedbump.

Tony shifts in his seat, jiggling his legs. His butt is falling asleep.

Pepper Potts sits on his right, dressed in her business best: purple blouse and professional black skirt. That professionalism is nowhere to be seen as she lays her head on Tony’s shoulder, long red hair spilling freely and smelling of her favorite perfume – Coco Mademoiselle Eau de Parfum.

It probably says a lot about their relationship that Tony has Pepper’s preferred fragrance memorized by heart.

Pepper doesn’t cry, even though Tony half-expects her to. She’s done all her crying during the past few weeks, screaming and ranting and searching desperately for a way out, a third option, a miracle solution. Then she cried some more when she found out Tony had transferred all his company shares to her and appointed her CEO, accusing him of giving up.

_“I don’t deserve you,” Tony tells her, after listening to one-half of a phone call turned impromptu screaming match between Pepper and Stark Industries’ head of legal. He guesses the conversation is pretty fruitless, based on the way Pepper slams down the receiver like it personally insulted her mother, then flops against her desk, the picture of exhausted frustration. “Really, I don’t. You don’t have to stick it out with me.”_

_Pepper looks at him then, face red and blotchy, eyes glittering and red-rimmed, long red hair rumpled, tired and careworn, not at all like her usual pristine and perfect self, but still beautiful, and Tony is reminded with all the swiftness of the coursing river, the force of a great typhoon, the strength of a raging fire –_

_Oh, wait._

_That’s Mulan._

_“You’re all I have left, Tony. I don’t have anyone else anymore.”_

_I don’t have Happy anymore, she doesn’t say, but they both hear it loud and clear._

Now, Pepper doesn’t cry, because she’s all cried out. Her tear ducts have been wrung out and squeezed and twisted for every last drop. She’s moved on to the last stage of grief: Acceptance. Except that Tony isn’t dying, except he sort of is, but not really, maybe kind of in a different way –

Moving on.

On the other hand, Rhodey has _not_ progressed to the acceptance stage of grief.

Rhodey is, in fact, still stuck on _anger_.

James Rhodes is sitting on Tony’s left, muscles tightly coiled, jaw clenched. He’s wearing his Air Force uniform, including formal tie and rows of medals decorating his breast. It makes a very caustic statement, having the star Colonel of the USAF, War Machine, personal friend of Tony Stark the war criminal standing side-by-side with him during Tony’s very infamous trial and SCOTUS’s equally publicized edict.

_“Your higher-ups won’t be happy about this,” Tony warns him. “They’re going to give you a hard time.”_

_“I don’t give a shit,” Rhodey responds eloquently._

Tony has seen a TV show once, a stupid competition where two teams competed to pump as much air as possible into a balloon without popping it, and the team who managed to make the biggest balloons wins. Rhodey reminds Tony of that one balloon, one more ill-advised pump away from going bang.

_“I messed up, Rhodey-bear,” Tony tells him, watching Rhodey pace agitatedly across their motel room._

_“Like hell you did, Tones.”_

_Tony has never seen Rhodey this furious, and that’s including the time Rhodey confiscated Tony’s armor when he once wore it drunk to a party._

_“I did, Rhodey.”_

_“Well, if you did, then so did I.” Rhodey growls, the sound more bear-like than human. “So did Nick Fury. So did Reed Richards. So did Maria Hill and Dum-Dum Dugan. So did dozens of people in the UN and the government. They don’t get to just blame it all on you just because they want to shirk responsibility!”_

_“Rhodey,” Tony says, then pauses. He sighs, running a hand over his face. “Better me than anyone else,” he says finally. “SHIELD needs Fury at its helm. Reed has his family. What do I have?”_

_“You have me!” Rhodey says fiercely. He lunges forward and grips Tony, shaking him hard. “You have Pep! You don’t have to do your whole lone gunslinger act because it’s unnecessary! You don’t have to face this alone because you’re not!”_

_Tony doesn’t back down an inch. “And how do you propose we face it, huh? When SCOTUS finds me guilty – which they will, there’s no point arguing about this – I’ll be either looking at the death penalty or life imprisonment. And frankly? I know which one I prefer. You – either of you – go against the sentence, you’ll be aiding and abetting a war criminal. You’ll be going against the law.”_

_“That’s never stopped me before. It’s never stopped Pepper.”_

_“Just like it’s never stopped Happy?” Tony says, a ruthless smile plays at his mouth. Rhodey gives a full-body flinch. “If I run, they’ll hunt me down, and there’s nowhere on this planet I could hide from a worldwide manhunt.”_

_“We could fight!” Rhodey says savagely._

_“For how long?” Tony asks tiredly._

_Rhodey sets his jaw obstinately – he’s Atlas, willing to shoulder the burden of the sky so Tony isn't crushed. “As long as we have to.”_

_“You don’t have to fight. This is my mess, not yours, or Pepper’s.”_

_Rhodey gives him a scathing look. “If you really believe that, then you don’t know us at all.”_

_“But I do,” Tony says, a forlorn smile playing at his mouth. “I’ve chosen my closest friends well – too well. You – all of you are too loyal for your own good. What if fighting costs you everything?”_

_“Then it’s our choice to make.”_

_“Happy made that choice once,” Tony points out, something visceral and devastating ripping inside his ribcage as his old friend’s name leaves his lips. “But what if this time, there’s no way out? No third option? No plan and no time? What if this is it, Rhodey?” The hue of Tony’s blue eyes have been sapped out, leaving them looking washed out. “What if I don’t want you or Pepper or anyone else to die for me?”_

_He remembers Happy in his hospital bed, the beeping of the life support machines, how the stocky man seemed to be diminished underneath the starch-white bedcovers; how Tony froze at the feet of the bed, hand gripping the bedframe, the cold of the metal sinking into his hand and numbing his fingers._

_Happy, who was attacked and rendered comatose during his and Pepper’s anniversary. Happy, who was only in the warehouse because he came to seek out Tony._

_Then Pepper’s request in the hospital canteen, face impassive but for the silent tears streaming down her pale face, the freckles and glistening wet trails standing out starkly against her complexion, like raindrops trickling down white marble._

_Tony was almost driven to drink._

_And he was the one who ended it._

_Ended Happy._

_Why Pepper even deigned to speak with him after that was still a mystery._

_“How long until I’m standing over your body? Over Pepper’s?” Tony’s lower lip quivers. Rhodey blanches. “I walked that road once, Rhodey, and I never want to have to walk down it again. Don’t you see? You and Pepper are all I have. You have to make it through this. I need you both to make it through this. More than anything else in the world, that’s what I want.”_

Now, Tony presses his shoulder against Rhodey’s reassuringly and sneaks a sideways glance. At the small amount of contact, Rhodey’s face changes from homicidal plotting to vaguely constipated. Tony chalks it up as a win.

Maria Hill and Dum-Dum Dugan speak in hushed tones at the front of the van, separated from Tony, Pepper, and Rhodey by a mesh screen. It’s probably against protocol to leave Tony unguarded, just like they’re probably not supposed to leave Tony uncuffed.

Tony feels the van turn sharply.

He drums his fingers against his thigh.

At one point, he isn’t sure when, he starts holding Pepper and Rhodey’s hands, the way he hasn’t held anyone’s since he was very small. Pepper and Rhodey don’t comment on it, even though the grip must be cutting off the circulation to their fingers. They sit in silence, counting down the seconds, listening to the rumble of the van’s engine, soaking up each other’s presence like sponges soaking up water, like sunflowers soaking up the sunlight, like a Roomba sucking up grit, like microfiber mops attracting dust, like tampons –

Okay.

No.

Ugh.

“Stop it.” Tony admonishes himself sternly.

“Stop what?”

“Nothing… just talking to myself.”

Well used to Tony’s numerous and motley eccentricities, Pepper and Rhodey merely accept the lackluster explanation and move on.

Tony’s vibrating in his seat. He’s metaphorically bouncing off the walls. He doesn’t know how long he’s been stuck in this cramped, confined space. The wait is the most horrible part of it. The drawn-out uncertainty, the restlessness and the ambivalence, like a miniature python swimming through his veins, coiling round and round his chest and heart and lungs, squeezing, constricting his windpipe, cutting off his airflow.

Tony wants to arrive already. He wants the wait to _end_. He wants _out of this van –_

The van stops. The engine dies. The backdoors of the van swing open to reveal Maria, looking grim. Behind her, Dugan has his hands on his hips and is studying his toes intently. Over their shoulders, Tony sees an endless backdrop trees and little else.

Tony changes his mind. He doesn’t want out of this van.

But of course, he typically doesn’t get what he wants.

“Welcome to Canada,” Dugan says.

Tony clambers out of the van with legs that threaten to give out under him, a little bit because of nerves, but mostly due to the blood rushing back into his numb extremities. Dugan has parked the van by the side of narrow dirt road bracketed on either side by woodland, a few feet away from a nondescript motorcycle.

Maria tosses Tony a set of keys and a black helmet.

Maria gives him a menacing look. “You didn’t get it from us.”

Tony smirks weakly. “I told you I’d grow on you, didn’t I?”

“Like a fungus.” Maria nods.

Tony pivots slowly on his heel, looking around. He identifies most of the trees as being either coniferous or deciduous, plus a few flowering shrubs. The evening summer air smells earthy and woodsy, overlaid with the rich scent of pine needles.

Pepper thrusts a large grey backpack into his arms. “Fake ID, birth certificate, driver’s license, school records, medical and life insurances, three thousand in Canadian dollars, a Stark phone and laptop… There’s a pink folder in there containing information about your new bank account. A change of clothes. Razors. Toothbrushes. Hair dye.”

“It’s like you think I can’t survive by myself.”

“You can’t.”

Tony raises his eyebrows at her, then looks pointedly at Dugan and Maria, both of whom have gamely turned their heads deliberately elsewhere and feigned temporary deafness.

“You hear something, Hill?” Dugan asks jauntily.

“Nope.”

“We got you a house. The documents are in the blue folder,” Pepper continues. “A property owned by one of our holding companies.”

“_Your_ holding company now,” Tony reminds her.

Pepper ignores him. “It’s a bit of a fixer-upper, but the point is no one will miss it.”

_Perfect for me then_, Tony doesn’t say.

It’s almost sunset. The daylight has dimmed and the cheerful white clouds overhead have been highlighted orange. Dugan and Maria, standing only a few feet from each other, are debating at the top of their lungs about whether or not the faint rustling noise Dugan heard earlier was a squirrel or a cleverly concealed HYDRA agent. Tony swings the backpack over one shoulder, tucking the black bike helmet under his armpit.

“Rhodey.”

“Tones.”

They clasp arms, gripping tightly. Neither men have ever been big on physical contact, but this time, instead of pulling away after the handshake, Tony stumbles forward as if shoved, and Rhodey catches him, just like he did when he first met Tony, all of fifteen-years-old, puking his guts out in the bathroom of their shared dorm; just like when he caught Tony in the deserts of Afghanistan; just like he has always caught Tony.

It’s one of the laws of the known universe:

One: Newton’s Laws of Motion

Two: Rhodey will always catch him.

Three: Pepper will always support him.

Four: Happy has always believed in him.

“At least this time we rode the Fun-Vee together, Rhodey,” Tony says, vision going blurry.

“You _asshole,_” Rhodey gasps in a choked voice, hauling him in for a bone-breaking hug. “You utter _idiot_! How could you put us through this again?”

“I think the _real_ question is why you’ve put up with me for so long,” Tony jests. “But you see, good things _do_ come to those who wait after all, Rhodey!” He goes into Game Show Host mode. “Congratulations, sweetheart! For putting up with me for more than a decade, _you_ get a multi-billion fortune! Don’t spend all your inheritance on sweets.”

Rhodey thumps him hard on the back. “Shut up. You’re ruining the moment.”

“But that’s my specialty.” Tony’s voice is muffled, his face buried in Rhodey’s shoulder. Rhodey smells of aftershave and clothes detergent. Neither of them mentions the growing wet spot there. “I signed up for Moment-Ruining in MIT – top of the class. Seriously, though. Take care of my fortune, Rhodey. And my beach-houses; my private islands; my many, many penthouses; and my assorted mansions. I would have left you my company as well, but Pepper has that covered, so if you want it, you’ll going to have to take it up with her. Are you taking notes? You should be taking notes. Oh – I’ve left you Avengers Tower as well – maybe it’s Stark Tower now – unless you’re going to give it to Steve to use as a base. And in that case, I will act outwardly supportive and benevolently understanding but feel inwardly betrayed. And my Iron Man armor – those are yours as well.”

“Hard standard you’re asking me to live up to here,” Rhodey says, an edge of plaintiveness in his voice.

“Nah,” Tony says blithely. “The world’s pretty sick of Iron Men nowadays. War Machine – that sounds like a hero for the future.”

“Does it now?”

“Strength ordained out of the mouth of a futurist and all.”

“I thought it was the mouths of babes.”

“_Now_ who’s ruining the moment?”

“I think this is enough hugging, don’t you?”

“You’re right. Pep probably wants a turn.”

The two men part.

Tony turns to Pepper, who’s sniffling, eyes watery, but she doesn’t let any tears fall.

“Mr. Stark.”

“Miss Potts.”

“Your eyes are red,” Tony notes. “A few tears for your ex-boss?”

“Tears of joy.” Pepper gives a wobbly smile. “You were a terrible boss. You never followed your itinerary. You always blew off board meetings. And the stock price dropped every time you blew up something in your suit.”

“My two closest friends – what would I do without you?” Tony marvels.

"You would have died a horrible death years ago," Pepper deadpans.

On his right, James Rhodes: brave and relentless and stubborn. In front of him, Pepper Potts: brilliant and vicious and compassionate. There’s an empty space on his left where a third person should be standing – his absence felt keenly every day. Happy Hogan: steadfast and fearless and honest. All three of them more loyal to Tony than he deserves, more loyal than is wise.

Pepper throws her arms around him. Tony presses a kiss into her sweet-smelling hair.

“My entire life,” Tony says, as Pepper pulls away, looking between her and Rhodey. “I’ve doubted everything and everyone – but I’ve never doubted the two of you.”

Pepper gives a valiant attempt at pulling herself together. “Will that be all, Mr. Stark?”

“That will be all, Miss Potts,” Tony says in a gracious tone.

“Tones.” Rhodey’s dark eyes are soft and understanding. “Call us, okay? Every week just to let us know you’re alive. And we’ll visit when you’re ready to see us again.”

Tony wants to drop to his knees and weep in gratitude. Rhodey understands. Rhodey has always understood, even during the times when Pepper and Happy have struggled to. Rhodey knows that Tony needs time, alone, to come to terms with everything. Now that Tony’s entire sense of self, of identity, has been stripped away (he is not the Golden Avenger anymore, not Shellhead, not businessman or philanthropist or billionaire). He needs to reinvent himself, tear down the walls of his persona and erect a new building from the foundations of old.

Stark men are made of iron.

But iron can always be re-forged in sufficiently hot fires.

Throat tight, Tony tries to quip. “Who am I to turn down the request of a respected member of the United States military?”

“Usually the first in line,” Rhodey deadpans.

Maria Hill and Dum-Dum Dugan have wandered several yards away, gazing determinedly at the opposite direction in an attempt to give them privacy while Tony says his tearful farewells. As Tony climbs on the motorcycle, puts on his helmet, and revs the engine, the sound draws their attention. Dugan salutes sharply. Maria gives him a _very_ grudging nod.

Tony pulls back the throttle and roars down the road, glad the helmet’s tinted visor conceals his face.

…

By the time Tony reaches bumfuck Newfoundland, he’s thoroughly sick of trees. Trees are fine and dandy is one wants to be calm and serene. Tony has no problem with calming and serene trees, just as long as those trees are being calming and serene far, far away from him.

The phrase ‘better in small doses’ comes to mind. And in Tony’s case, it’s very, _very_ small doses.

So, when Pepper’s address leads him to a piece of property _surrounded_ by the stuff, Tony is about ready to do his nut.

The outer walls of the dilapidated structure (what little of it he can see beneath all the reindeer moss and lichens) are thin and made of wood, and have once been painted an airy baby blue, but parts of it have rotted away, eaten away by woodlice, the structural integrity so compromised that Tony’s moderately surprised the roof hasn’t collapsed ages ago. There’s a rickety outhouse, which he’s going to do away with altogether; a shoddy garage made entirely out of corrugated metal sheets attached to the side of the cabin, the doors rusted shut.

(Tony can almost imagine Bruce lecturing him about the dangers of tetanus, but thinking of Bruce leads to thoughts of the Hulk and the Illuminati and Tony’s eyes start to itch, so he stops that train of thought hastily.)

When night falls, the roof – which has several wooden planks missing and is thus open to the elements – emits a series of screeching sounds and a swarm of _bats_ soar out of it.

And the plants.

What’s wrong with them, you ask?

They’re _everywhere_.

(Tony can’t even… he just can’t… _why_?)

“Bah!” Tony grumbles bad-temperedly. It’s only because he’s certain he’s alone that he gives into the petulant impulse to stomp his feet childishly. “Nature. Who needs it?”

Still, it beats being a drunk homeless person. Tony has been there, donated the T-shirt to Goodwill. Zero stars. Would not recommend.

Perhaps it’s a good thing though, having so much that needs to be done.

Tony gets rid of all the moss and lichens first – seriously, what is with all these plants? – and then walks around smelling of vinegar for days. Mindful of the diminished funds in his new bank account (and it’s a wholly novel concept, having to watch how much he spends; Rhodey tells him it’s character-building, Tony hangs up on him) he salvages what he can (which isn’t much) and rebuilds what he can’t.

The residents of the nearest town – Conception Bay South – don’t seem to recognize or give much thought to the melancholic blond clean-shaven man who stays a week at their fanciest hotel (thank God for small mercies, room service, and a steady hot water supply).

“Seems like a nice sort of man,” Mr. Dickens would say if asked about ‘Tai Sandoval’. He’s the owner of the hardware store – an ancient man with a shiny bald head and brown tanned skin, with a genial grandfatherly air.

His wife is a wispy slip of a woman with short silver curls, who never fails to offer ‘Tai Sandoval’ some of her homemade cookies because “You look half-starved, you poor boy! Do an old woman a favor and let her put some meat on your bones!”

“Rebuilding his old family cabin,” Mr. Dickens would say if prodded further. “Came in here to buy lumber and concrete, some tools and paint. Then he drove off with the whole lot in the back of one of Lewis Combs’s rental trucks. Look, that’s all I know. You wanna know more, you ask Lewis.”

Tony seals off the attic and leaves the roof as it is because he can’t bear to kick out the bats living there, no matter if they’re basically a swarm of smelly and noisy menaces. He supposes that technically, the bats were here first.

(Jesus, he’s turning soft over _bats_. All this nature and self-imposed solitude are obviously driving him out of his mind.)

He tears down the garage and rebuilds it as a workshop. He revamps the cabin’s exterior and interior walls and then goes a little crazy with the dozen cans of Dulux Blue Babe. He’s an impulsive shopper. So, his furniture rather resembles a mix-and-match dollhouse owned by a color-blind toddler.

In other words, they’re kind of an eyesore.

What can he say? He’s used to paying Pepper to manage every aspect of his life, including the style of interior decoration and choices of paint swatches.

(“What do I pay you for?” Tony complains to her. He feels pride that even in bumfuck Newfoundland, he still gets full bars. Stark-phones are the _best_.

“You don’t pay me anything anymore,” Pepper says, the cutthroat.)

He buys a swing! Then he paints it blue too! Just because!

Tony snaps a picture on his phone and sends it to Pepper and Rhodey.

Pepper: _I think I preferred it as it was._

Rhodey responds with an attachment: Two pictures side-by-side – the cabin and the four-seater swing set an indistinguishable baby-blue square one the left; and a picture of an actual blue square on the right.

Tony sulks and ignores them for two days.

On Day Three, Tony picks up a stray.

“No,” Tony says, frowning severely. “No. I refuse. First the bats? Now this? I’m not starting a petting zoo here.”

The tiny black Labrador-Husky puppy (Tony _thinks_ it’s black, it could just be all the dirt stuck to its fur) whines pathetically. It lowers its face onto its paws, tail tucked between its legs and left ear flattened, giving him big soulful blue eyes.

Fuck.

Tony narrows his own blue eyes. “I’m not taking you home with me.”

The puppy sniffles.

Tony takes the puppy home with him.

…

“So, you’re really black under all this dirt.” The tiny black puppy barks and laps at the soapy water, then whines at the taste. Tony scrubs its back. “Doesn’t it feel good to be clean?” The puppy’s tail wags. “You good-” Tony lifts the puppy up for a look. “-boy. Who’s a good boy?”

(No, Tony isn’t giving baby-talk to a _dog_, Rhodey. Don’t be ridiculous. He’ll crush anyone who insinuates otherwise.)

Out of the small tub, the puppy shakes himself violently, spraying water everywhere. Tony looks down at his plain white T-shirt, speckled with dark wet spots, and sighs in exasperation. He pats the puppy down with a warm fluffy towel, being very gentle when he reaches the puppy’s half-bitten right ear.

“You’ve been through the mill, haven’t you?” Tony says quietly, as the puppy whines and buts his head against Tony’s knee. “No one wants you either?”

The puppy lowers his head woefully.

Tony subsequently suffers some kind of… of psychotic break. There’s no other explanation for the crying. And once he starts, he can’t seem to stop. He’s kneeling on the bathroom floor, kneecaps twinging, soapy water seeping into his black lounge pants, shirt damp. The tiniest and cutest puppy he’s ever seen is nosing imploringly at his hand. Tony uses the hand holding the towel to blow his nose, making it disgusting and full of snot, getting dog hair all over his face. He pats the puppy with his other hand.

He’s a glass bottle full of Coke and Mentos with the cap screwed on too tightly to pop off. He’s been undergoing nucleation, the pressure building up higher and higher until the first crack appears in the glass surface followed by the explosion: messy and sharp and dangerous.

He is _really_ bad at metaphors.

The puppy licks Tony’s fingers.

“I think I’m going to call you Gerald.” Tony chuckles wetly. “You know, when Rhodey told me he thought I should get a support animal, I don’t think this is what he meant.”

…

Tony gets a job.

Not because he needs to. Pepper’s monthly deposit into his account (Tony has told her to stop, but she still does it) is enough for him to live comfortably in his little patch of deserted woodland without working a day for the rest of his life.

Not because of pride either. Pride is not and has never been an issue between Tony and Pepper and Rhodey. Pepper and Rhodey (and Happy, but that still kind of hurts to think of) have seen Tony drink his entire life’s work down the drain, seen him at his most villainous during the Superhero Civil War, seen him at his most twisted and broken and stood by him even during the very worst and the lowest points of his life. Tony can be as prideful as he wants with everyone – everyone except them.

No, it’s because Tony Stark hates being idle.

The silence weighs down on his shoulders, like Tony is the lone and eternal passenger in the Airline From Hell, eardrums ringing and sore as he travels higher and higher into the stratosphere, slowly but surely suffocating from the less breathable air.

Long-term exposure to the wilderness seems to be making his metaphors worse.

So, he gets a job as a blue-collar mechanic working for minimum wage, at one of those run-of-the-mills general repair shops that no one who knew Tony Stark before would ever think he’d be caught dead at.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Time passes.

Tony takes care of Gerald, watches him grow from a downy-furred, pudgy, adorable gangly, tiny puppy to a downy-furred, pudgy, adorably gangly, slightly bigger puppy. He goes to work, impresses his boss so much that he has to turn down a raise – Dominique Owens is a veteran who still suffers from lingering PTSD, has five mouths to feed at home and one more on its way. He plans potatoes, turnips, and carrots in his meager garden. He collects his bronze 7-year sobriety chip. He calls Pepper and Rhodey.

He keeps tabs on the Avengers whenever he feels extraordinarily self-loathing or masochistic. James Barnes is still Captain America. There are several Avengers teams: New and Mighty and Young. None of them are headquartered in his old Tower. Tony expects to feel sad about that, but mostly he’s relieved. When he brings up the topic during his next phone call to Rhodey, Rhodey tells him his tentative plans to renovate the skyscraper as a science center, which Tony greets with exuberant encouragement. Then Rhodey tells him cautiously about the unofficial rumors of Commander Steve Rogers aiming to retire from the public eye and hand over SHIELD operations to Sharon Carter and Nick Fury. Tony stays silent. Rhodey takes the hint and changes the subject.

Summer shifts incrementally to autumn. The leaves turn shades of reds and oranges and golds, shedding from their branches and carpeting the forest floor in a canopy encompassing all the colors of the sunset. Tony rakes up piles of them as tall as his hip solely for the purpose of watching his puppy frolic through them with gleeful abandon. He discovers a love of all things blueberry and bakeapples, and stocks up on jars and jars of jam to last him throughout the winter.

He harvests the vegetables of his labor, insists that they’re perfectly edible.

Rhodey’s face peers at them from Tony’s laptop screen, looking supremely unimpressed, and claims that his potatoes look like deformed fetuses.

Winter arrives in a flurry of snowflakes and a bitterly cold chill. Freshly fallen snow blankets every surface; freezing over the woodland earth; making Tony’s cabin look like a recently frosted gingerbread house or something that should be inside a snow-globe. The snow lades down the boughs of the varied evergreen trees – the overall effect is something that looks like it ought to belong on a postcard.

It’s at this low, low point that Tony realize, much to his own mortified outrage (and Pepper and Rhodey’s endless amusement) that he can now distinguish between Jack Pines and Red Pines and other disparate tree types. It’s come to that.

As much as Gerald loves autumn and summer, he turns out not to be a fan of snow. The puppy gets into the habit of slinking out of his Iron Man themed dog-bed (“It’s funny!” Tony insists to Rhodey, when he just sighs and shakes his head.) and into Tony’s own, the puppy curling up against his chest, shivering and whimpering pitifully until he caves and lets him stay there. Eventually, even Tony gets sick of the wintry temperatures, of shivering under the blankets all night, his face and limbs numb from the frosty weather, and their sleeping arrangement migrates to a blanket fort thrown together in front of the Stark-modified electric heater, cranking it up until Tony’s breath no longer fogs up in front of his face and he can feel all his parts again.

The first snowmelt is greeted by raucous celebratory howling from Gerald. The air is still crisp and raw, but it stops being unbearably nippy to venture outdoors without being covered head-to-toe in so many thick layers that Tony finds himself making like a penguin and waddling. Hardy wild shrubs and undergrowth poke their vivid green heads out of the winter-hardened earth. Flowers bloom and leaves bud. Soon, the air is perfumed with the aroma of flowers.

Tony had this once.

He recalls when he was Hogan Potts.

He remembers loving it.

Or… well, parts of it.

He loved the lack of reporters, the anonymity, the absence of public scrutiny on his every move. No corporate troubles. No people trying to _assassinate_ him because some rich nut hired them to.

The parts of it he _didn’t_ like were the asshole boss, the secrets he kept that ended up hurting people, the helplessness he felt outside of his armor.

In the end, the bad seemed to outweigh the good. Then Rhodey came with his suspicions and his subtle disapproval, and Tony started second-guessing his decision. After all, Rhodey knew him the longest and the best out of everyone, and if he thought there was something more to it –

_I thought that this was all a little out of character for you – that maybe there’s something deeper to all this. That virtual reality machine, the one you fought Ty Stone in, your mind was linked to it. Did you ever think… I mean, what happened to you in there?_

In the end, they never found out whether Rhodey’s qualms were ever true. Tony’s mind-scan came back inconclusive. Tony was uncertain – he’s _still_ uncertain whether that particular chapter of his life happened because a little voice in his head _told_ him to do it.

But the things that he’d loved about being Hogan Potts are the same parts that he likes about his life _now_.

Perhaps the reality is a bit of both viewpoints. Looking back, it _does_ seem very odd that he would give away everything he had to his name. Rhodey was right about that point. Tony-of-the-past loved the idea of being normal, of fading into obscurity, of no longer having the weight of so many decisions and responsibilities of his shoulders. He loves his life _now_. But he wouldn’t have given up his entire life’s work to achieve it.

Spring transitions to summer. During the swelteringly hot daytime, Tony feels like he’s drowning in his own sweat, walking around in a cloud of his own stench. During the nights, which are stuffy and humid, he feels like he’s taken a bath in his clothes.

And it’s during one summer day, a year on the dot from when he last step foot on American soil, that he steps out of his cabin, a denim jacket slung over his shoulder. Gerald is gnawing on Tony’s white trainers, and yips happily when he tries to tug it out of the puppy’s mouth. The puppy seems to think it’s all a fun game. Tony wrestles for his footwear, propping open the front door with a shoulder while simultaneously blocking Gerald’s many bids for freedom. It’s not Gerald getting lost in the forest that’s the problem. The difficulty arises when the puppy chases after his motorbike and tries to follow him all the way to work.

Both feet now free, Tony picks up the black puppy by the scruff of his neck.

“You’re a lot more trouble than you’re worth,” Tony says through the sunglasses clamped between his teeth. “I should dump you at a shelter to be some other bleeding heart’s problem.”

The puppy barks joyfully, plainly not comprehending a word, tongue lolling out of his panting mouth.

Tony locks Gerald back inside, turns around and immediately comes face to face with none other than Steve Goddamn Rogers.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

…

There’s a Harley-Davidson Street 750 parked in Tony’s gravelly front yard, sleek black and gleaming chrome, leaning dangerously close to his potato plants, green leafy shoots just beginning to peek out of the brown tilled soil. Tony flattens the capricious urge to tell Steve Rogers to move his bike.

The American Dream himself stands in front of Tony. Steve Rogers is in a black motorcycle jacket over a soft-looking blue T-shirt with a white star in the center of his chest. Tony knows that Steve has an entire wardrobe full of similarly designed T-shirts in varying shades of blue. Or at least, he used to. Tony isn’t really in a position to know what Steve has in his wardrobes these days. The thought is sobering, like a bucket of cold water thrown over a hungover man, the drunkenness and residual lethargy sloughing off, leaving unwelcome lucidity and jarring cognizance in its wake.

Tony is abruptly aware of how stupid he must look with the sunglasses still clamped in his mouth.

There was once a time when Tony knew every facet of Steve’s expression like the pages of his favorite book. He knew the way Steve smiled when he was happy, the almost languid cast of his facial muscles when he was relaxed or content, how his brows knotted in worry, the tightness around his eyes when he was stressed or tired, his clenched jaw when he was angry or frustrated, the way his blue eyes darkened or lightened depending on the changes of his mood.

But try as he might, Tony can’t pin down the exact meaning of the face Steve is making now. A large part of that might be due to the fact that Steve’s features get progressively blurrier and blurrier the harder Tony tries to focus on him.

Tony is going to be late for work.

The sun beats down on them. The silence gets heavier and more awkward the longer it stretches on. Tony’s skin itches as a mosquito perches itself greedily on his arm. He swats the insect automatically, leaving a bloody smear behind. The lower branches of a nearby pine tree quiver as a tiny grey bird with a bright red beak alights on it, pecking hopefully at the needle-shaped leaves. A finch, Tony thinks they’re called. His foot feels soggy from puppy slobber. His palms are clammy. He hears Gerald bark from inside, scratching against the front door.

Tony’s emotions fluctuate wildly from shock – numbness – confusion – dread – an absurd fondness – melancholy – grief – wistfulness – fear – so speedily that he gives himself whiplash, his thoughts tripping over themselves, until finally the convoluted impressions coalesce to form a kind of vague panic.

Tony is going to be late for work.

Tony has a lot of labyrinthine feelings about Steve Rogers, none of which he feels at all feels emotionally ready to deal with now.

Tony backs away until his back presses against the front door, fumbles behind him for the knob, turns it, staggers back over the threshold, and slams the door in Steve Rogers’s aggravatingly handsome and unreadable face.

Gerald is waiting faithfully for him on the other side, perched on his haunches. The puppy tilts his head inquisitively to one side, mouth open and panting, tail wagging excitedly.

Tony removes the sunglasses from his mouth. “Don’t judge me,” He tells Gerald.

The puppy barks joyously and runs circles around Tony’s ankles, wanting to play. Tony buries his head in his hands, accidentally poking himself in the eye with the frames of his sunglasses. Dismayed and injured, he gives serious thought to hiding indoors until Steve takes the hint and goes away. Gerald blasely goes back to gnawing on Tony’s white trainers, planting his furry behind on Tony’s feet to stop him escaping, the puppy’s furry tail tickling his skin.

Tony checks his wristwatch.

He’s running late for work.

He dislodges the furry black limpet on his shoes, turns right back around and opens the door.

“I’m running late for work,” He says to Steve Rogers, thoughtfully standing right where Tony left him outside.

“What?” Steve sounds stupefied.

“I’m running late for work,” Tony says again. “Employment. A means of earning income when one is no longer a multi-billionaire and owner of a Fortune 500 international company.”

Gerald darts out of the house before Tony can shut him inside again. Gerald takes one look at Steve, and his tail instantly rises, tremoring slightly. He bares his teeth, growling in what is supposed to be a menacing way but mostly just seems cute. Despite himself, Tony has to force his lips not to twitch.

Gerald is _his_ dog.

Tony very intentionally does not look at Steve’s face. “If you want to talk,” he says to Steve’s left earlobe, tone measured and tightly constrained. “It’ll have to wait until some other day.”

“I don’t have anything else planned today,” Steve replies. “I can wait.”

His tone is courteous. It’s a civility one reserves for strangers or distant acquaintances. Tony expected something more along the lines of righteous anger or righteous indignation. This foreign detachment is alien – makes Tony feel wrong-footed and slightly hunted.

“Fine.” Tony shrugs, feigning casual disinterest. “Keep an eye on Gerald. He’s teething. There’s chew toys and frozen carrots in the freezer for his gums. Don’t let him destroy any of the furniture. I’ve fed him already this morning, so don’t give him any snacks no matter how much he begs.”

The puppy gives him big soulful blue eyes full of betrayal, like he’s saying _‘You’re leaving me with this guy?’_ Or more likely, Gerald really means _‘No more snacks?’_

“And move your bike before it crushes my potatoes,” Tony says.

He can’t leave fast enough.

…

Tony ducks out of the repair shop during his lunch break and phones Rhodey, who picks up at the fifth ring.

“Hello?”

“Steve Rogers just showed up at my front door,” Tony says. No point in beating around the bush.

There’s a single loud juddering noise, like Rhodey has dropped the mobile, followed by an inarticulate tirade of invectives. Tony leans with his back against the brick wall, looking out of the mouth of the narrow alley, head turned unseeingly toward the grey-bricked shopfront with the red-and-white striped awning. The bakery sits on the other side of the road, popular with the locals for its rich, buttery Viennoisseries. Tony mostly ventures the store for its coffee and Jamelia Rodriguez, the pretty dark-skinned cashier.

He waits, phone pressed to his ear, listening mindlessly to the rustling as Rhodey gathers himself and picks up his mobile. “I didn’t tell him,” Rhodey immediately says.

“I know you didn’t,” Tony says in a forbearing manner.

“Pepper wouldn’t either.”

“I know that too.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing much.”

What did _you_ say?”

“I didn’t say much either,” Tony prevaricates.

Unfortunately, Rhodey is too well-versed in Tony's bullshit to fall for that. “_Tony_.”

“I didn’t. I told him I was late for work. Then I drove off.”

Rhodey makes his opinion on that known by a chary and suspicious silence.

Tony shuffles his feet. He knows that if Rhodey were here, he’d be wearing his Tony-You-Can’t-Bullshit-Your-Way-Out-Of-This-Anymore expression, painstakingly refined and diligently fine-tuned during the ten years of their friendships and field-tested on all of Tony’s occasionally asinine, usually nonsensical, always hare-brained misadventures.

“Well…” Tony says in a wheedling voice. “I might have… lethiminsideandagreedtotalkwithhimtonight.”

“_Tony._”

“No use crying over the leaking coolant system, platypus,” Tony says with forced levity. “What I’m more worried about is if Steve can find me, so can anyone else.”

“We’re not done talking about this,” Rhodey says darkly.

“Priorities, platypus,” Tony insists. “Damage control, now. Emotional heart-to-heart, hopefully never.”

“Never in your dreams maybe,” Rhodey says mockingly. “One emotional heart-to-heart with a side order of manly tears, to go.”

“Ugh. Platypus. Sourpatch. You know I’m allergic to emotional disclosures. They give me hives, rashes that itch, nasal congestions, a pain in my-”

“I don’t want to know what’s in your ass, Tony.”

“Lying doesn’t suit you, Pinocchio. You know better than anyone exactly what’s been in my ass-”

“You just had to make it weird.”

“You started it first.”

“How old are you? Four?”

“There’s nothing wrong with being young at heart.”

“Fine,” Rhodey says, rankled. “I won’t talk about Rogers and you won’t force me to bring you up on sexual harassment charges. Are you happy now, you Man-child?”

“Happy isn’t really the word I would use. Smug would be more appropriate. Complacent. Wisenheimer. Schadenfreude.”

Rhodey chooses to express himself with a mumbled diatribe about where Tony can shove his Wisenheimer.

“I couldn’t hear all of that,” Tony informs him in a solicitous tone. “But it sounded quite malicious. Don’t you know, Sourpatch? Words can hurt.”

“They’re hurting me now,” Rhodey says cantankerously.

“You’re such a big baby.” Tony rolls his eyes. “I’m sure Pepper will kiss it better.”

A white Ford F-150 with a slightly dented front bumper comes coasting past. At the wheel, a barely legal teenager with a regrettably pimply throws a peace sign at Tony as the vehicle cruises by.

“Have you told Pepper yet?” Rhodey asks.

“I was kind of hoping you would be the one to volunteer for the job.”

Rhodey scoffs. “Hah! I’m not that self-destructive. Or that masochistic.”

Tony inattentively starts to clean his grease-stained hands on the hem of his shirt – originally white, but now so stained with dark oil that never washes out that it resembles an abstract painting done in black dyes against a backdrop of grey canvas.

“Heads will roll,” Tony says drolly.

“Not mine.”

“It’s so nice to know that I can always rely on you,” Tony says sarcastically. “You live with her, Rhodey. It’s illogical for me to call twice when you can just wait for Pepper to get off work and tell her then. Besides, I’m tactless. Gauche. Without tact. There’s a very definite statistical history proving that Pepper takes bad news even worse when it’s coming from _moi_.”

“That was a very credible and well-founded argument,” Rhodey states mildly.

“It was, wasn’t it? I’ve impressed myself. Were you impressed?”

“No, because the only time you sound this level-headed is when you’re very decisively not.”

“Obedience is the mother of success and is wedded to safety,” Tony says loftily.

Rhodey sounds phenomenally unimpressed. “You’ve never obeyed anyone in your entire life, and you avoid safety like it’s the Black Plague.”

“Do as I say and not as I do.”

“I’ll have that carved into your tombstone after Pepper’s done with you. I enjoyed knowing you, Stark.”

“You’re fired.”

“I assume you don’t feel too bad about Rogers being there if you still have the energy to be this insufferable. Phew. For a moment there, I was getting worried.”

Through the large windows of the bakery, Tony catches Jamelia’s eye. The dark-skinned woman has her long shining black hair in a ponytail and wears a shapeless bakery apron that would look ugly and unflattering on just about anyone else. Jamelia’s sensuous lips curve up into a gleaming white smile. Tony responds with a charming grin of his own, pointing at his phone, then splaying all five fingers: _Five minutes_. Jamelia ducks her head bashfully and goes back to work.

“So, it’s settled then,” Tony decides. “Division of labor. I’ll deal with Rogers. You deal with Pepper-”

“Hold on a minute, I never agreed to-”

Tony bulldozes right over him with the skill cultivated from more than a decade of unfaltering perniciousness in ignoring the protests and opinions of his saner and more sensible friends. “-and the two of you can deal with the leak. Find out if anyone squealed, who compromised the company servers or tracked down the paper trail. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a lovely lady who’s been kept waiting for far too long.”

“Tony, don’t you dare hang up-”

Tony hangs up. He steps into the bakery with a swagger, the bell tinkling above the door. Jamelia looks up from her customer and her cheeks darken at the sight of him.

“Yep,” Tony mutters to himself. “Still got it.”


	2. Chapter 2

Steve’s motorbike is still in his front yard (although thankfully at a tolerable distance from Tony’s potatoes) by the time he finally clocks off. Knowing that they have to have this talk sooner or later, Tony still feels his heart sink down to somewhere in the vicinity of his toes. He half-hoped that Steve would be called away by a conveniently timed alien invasion or HYDRA raid. But no such luck.

Tony finds Steve in the living room, sitting in the white Wing Lounge Chair. Gerald is curled up in his lap and happily being patted.

“Turncoat.” Tony scowls at Gerald.

The puppy blinks innocently at him, gnawing on a stick of frozen carrot.

“I almost didn’t recognize you,” Steve says, giving Tony an argutely sagacious look that makes him feel like he’s being x-rayed.

Tony raises a hand and touches his face, his hair, before he can stop himself. After a year, being cleanshaven and his hair a perpetual store-bought blond doesn’t seem outré anymore. He’s acclimatized to his drastically different reflection, though he still mourns his punctiliously trimmed goatee.

“That’s the whole point.” Tony nods at the glass coffee table, where a light grey mug with dark dregs at the bottom sits on a brown cork coaster, next to a plate where the remnants of some tomato-mozzarella salad sits. “I see you’ve made yourself at home.”

They used to live half in each other’s pockets all the time – at the Mansion and then the Tower. Sharing mugs and meals. Steve’s sketches and charcoals scattered in among Tony’s tools in his workshop. Tony’s favored coffee beans stocked in the kitchen cupboards in Steve’s apartment. But this execrable facsimile of those times, right here after everything that has happened, hurts Tony like a rusty knife to the stomach.

Perhaps some of his thoughts make their way onto Tony’s face, because Steve’s countenance turns penitent, the edges of his frown suffused with sorrow. “I’m sorry for intruding. I didn’t mean to be rude.”

“Of course, you didn’t,” Tony says flippantly. “Because you’re a very polite person.”

“You have a very nice home.” Steve’s voice snags a little at the word _home_. Tony reckons he’s not the only one who’s unpleasantly recollecting old times.

Steve looks around at the wooden walls, painted an insipid baby-blue; at the inharmonious IKEA furniture: glass tables, carved rosewood chairs, leather couches. The collection is completed by the fancy white lounge chair Steve is still sitting in, appearing completely at odds with the rest of the room’s décor. There are framed pictures hanging on the walls: Pepper and Rhodey and Happy, with a marked absence of any member of the Avengers or Tony himself.

“If you say so.” Tony arches an eyebrow. “Who told you where to find me?”

“Nick.”

Tony… should have seen that coming.

_What are you playing at, Nick?_

“Wait. I need to do something first.” Tony puts his hands on his hips. “Stand up.”

Steve looks wary. “Why?”

“Just stand.”

Steve sets Gerald down, where the puppy parks its little butt on the floor and looks between them with great interest in its blue doggy eyes, still working on his stick of carrot. Steve gets to his feet, all six feet two of him, the military grace and tightly-controlled strength of his movements like a magnet to Tony’s eyes. Tony grabs the other man by the arm, pushes him away from the stylish white lounge chair, then takes his place. Tony feels his body sink down into the upholstery, the elastic memory foam contouring around him, and lets out a hazy groan of pleasure. Gerald climbs onto Tony’s lap, gross half-chewed carrot still in his mouth, nosing Tony’s hand until he starts stroking the puppy’s head.

“That’s better.” Tony slurs slightly, blue eyes going half-lidded. He looks up at an exasperated Steve. “They make these for space crafts, you know.”

“Does IKEA sell these too?” Steve deadpans.

Tony cracks open an eyelid to give Steve a slightly sleepy glare. “It was a birthday present from Pepper, if you must know. She’s the _best_.” He shifts himself to a more comfortable position, feeling the knots of tension in his back loosen. “Well, go on then. If you’re going to yell at me, I might as well be comfortable while you’re doing it.”

“I’m not going to yell at you.”

“But you want to,” Tony observes, a wily cadence to his tone. “I’d recognize that pissed-off self-righteous look of yours anywhere. Well, go on. Don’t hold back on my account. But sit down first. I don’t want to stare up your nose while you do it. It’s not your best angle.”

“I forgot how exhausting you were,” Steve grouches, choosing one of the carved rosewood chairs.

Tony watches with a laudably straight face, as Steve fidgets in his seat, back ramrod straight, shifting minutely as the hard, unyielding wood pokes him in places that should never be poked, cutting off the blood flow to several critical extremities. Steve looks at the leather couches, which Tony knows are stifling in the summer heat and has the consistency of marshmallow, so one would sink right into it and be subsequently suffocated by the warm leather.

“Comfy?” Tony asks guilelessly.

Steve gives him a dirty look. Tony’s innocent charade breaks as he starts to snicker.

“You _would _be the type to intentionally buy uncomfortable furniture for the sole purpose of making life harder for your visitors,” Steve says in annoyance.

“What can I do for you, Commander Rogers?” Tony asks, and the tension in the room ricochets.

Steve is silent for a very long moment. Tony gives him a challenging look, unwilling to be the one to lose their staring contact. In his lap, Gerald seems to feel neglected and whines for attention. Tony scratches the puppy behind the ears, eyes still on Steve. Steve’s blue eyes are dark and shadowed with profound emotion, something troubled and tired. The super soldier serum stops him from getting bags under his eyes, but Steve has the restless, jittery vibe of someone who has endured many sleepless nights. His blond hair has been hand-combed, but still looks a bit mussed from wearing a helmet. His hands rest on his knees. Every bit of him is tense, the cords of muscle in his shoulders and arms standing out tautly.

“I’m not,” Steve says.

It takes a while for Tony to hear him. “Sorry. What?” He makes himself stop staring like a creep.

“Not Commander Rogers,” Steve elucidates. He’s watching Tony’s reaction very closely, waiting for… something. “As of today, SHIELD answers to Director Nick Fury and Deputy Director Sharon Carter.”

“You picked Sharon over Maria?” Tony whistles lowly. “I bet Hill wasn’t very happy about that.”

“Nick was the one who said he wanted Sharon as his second.”

“Even worse.”

“If I told you we could get you a pardon, would you want to come back?” Steve asks, out of left field.

Tony stares. “Are you feeling okay, Steve?”

“Just answer the question,” Steve says curtly.

Go back? Tony has never, ever, not even in his wildest dreams, thought that would be in the cards. Back to being an Avenger, to fighting as Iron Man, taking back his company – the thought makes him feel emetic in a backasswards way. Back to America, where the citizens lionized and glorified in his banishment, never mind how many times Tony has risked his life to save them. Back to his quondam brothers-in-arms – the ones he wronged and the ones who wronged him. He thinks about how Thor shrugged him off after they stopped the Skrull Invasion, the barely hidden hostility from Wolverine and Barnes and Luke Cage, how even those who stood by Tony during the fight over the SHRA deserted him.

“I’m sorry,” Tony blurts out, without quite meaning to.

Tony ducks his head, directing his focus into fussing over Gerald, who seems blissfully nescient over the mounting tension in the room. Seconds pass with no sound but the puppy’s soft woofs, and Tony scrounges up the last few vestiges of his valor and sneaks a look at Steve, only to find the other man already contemplating him. There’s something alarmingly resembling expectation on Steve’s face, his elbows on the armrests, fingers tented, the very picture of equanimity and stoicism.

“You fought for what you thought was right,” Tony says, when it becomes obvious that Steve intends to wait him out. “And the public crucified you for it. I… I was supposed to be your friend, and I led the charge. I hunted you and persecuted you and betrayed you because of it.”

“Doesn’t feel very good, doesn’t it?” Steve asks coolly.

Tony flinches, then tries to play it off as a shrug, though he doubts Steve is fooled. “No, it doesn’t,” He admits.

“But you’re not sorry for the SHRA itself,” Steve says succinctly.

Tony chooses his words very carefully, speaking very slowly, aware that he’s threading in very dangerous waters.

“The thing is though… I was doing what I thought was best as well. And even looking back from where I am now, I still think it was the best course of action.”

“How can you say that?” Steve demands, losing his poise. His knuckles whiten from how hard he’s clenching them. “After all the ways it could have gone wrong? After all the ways it _did _go wrong!”

Tony meets his eyes evenly. “I can say that because I know what the alternative is.” He lets a mirthless smile curve his lips. “Did you remember when I told you about Project Wideawake, Steve?”

Something behind Steve’s azure-blue eyes seem to sputter and die. Tony presses on ruthlessly.

“You didn’t believe me, told me it would never happen, that the American public would never stand for it. But you know better now, don’t you?”

An edge of pity creeps into Tony’s voice. Steve holds himself braced and stiff, ready for a blow.

“For a year, you were in charge of the security of the free world. SHIELD had access to all sorts of backroom dealings, background on corrupted officials, information on the kind of things Congress was getting up to out of the public’s eye.”

Steve holds himself very, very still. Tony’s chest rises and falls with agitation.

“So, you _know _how close they were to approving Project Wideawake, how much danger we were really in. What do you think would have happened if we’d all rebelled against the Act? Without anyone to moderate them, how long do you think we’d all last before they’d track us down and chip us like dogs? You saw the proposal. You know what they were planning. The dissections and experiments and obedience collars. There was nothing good about the SHRA,” Tony clarifies. “I’m not so deluded as to believe otherwise, Extremis or not. Registration might have been avowedly to guarantee the country’s security, but with people like Pat Mullet and Paul Grant and James Pertierra on the subcommittee and pulling strings, you really think I’d be fooled into thinking it was anything about anything other than leashing us? But it was a lesser evil between two hellish options, and I made the only choice I could. I’m not saying any of what I did was right, because I’m not. But not a lot of people know how much worse it could have been.”

He is close to yelling now. At one point he has gotten to his feet, dislodging the puppy in his lap. Gerald slinks away with his tail drooped, leaving the slobbery carrot at Tony’s feet.

“If you had just told me-”

“I did tell you, Steve.” All at once, the anger that fills Tony drains out of him, leaving him feeling hollow, and he collapses back into his chair. “You wouldn’t listen.”

“I wouldn’t,” Steve agrees. “But you didn’t try very hard, did you? You never _trusted_ me. I was supposed to be your best friend, Tony. But the first time I even heard about the SHRA was right before Maria Hill – _your _second-in-command – gave the order to have me shot and arrested! You trusted Reed Richards and Hank Pym. Why not me?”

“_Trust _wouldn’t be the word I would use. I _delegated-_”

“You _lied _to me!” Steve bellows. “All that time I thought we were rebuilding the New Avengers team. I thought we were getting closer – closer than we’d ever been before.” Underneath the fire of his rage, there’s real hurt and genuine pain, which makes Tony look away, pulse stuttering. “And all that time you had been keeping this secret from me. Did you ever trust me at all?”

“I did,” Tony says in a shaky voice. “It wasn’t a matter of trust.”

“Then what was it?” Steve snarls. “Because I wasn’t clever enough, is that it? You didn’t tell me because you didn’t think I’d be _useful_? Or was it just convenient for you to let me go about my business in ignorance? How did that work out for you? You didn’t trust me and I stopped trusting you and now look where we both ended up! We tore the superhero community apart because you couldn’t find the fucking time to tell me what the hell you were planning!”

“You don’t have to tell me where I fucked up,” Tony says morosely. “I’ve had plenty of time to figure that out myself.”

“That’s not what I-” Steve breaks off, pinching the bridge of his nose, looking like he’s nursing a headache. “This is getting is us nowhere.”

“I can see why they call you a tactical genius.”

“You make me so _mad_.”

“An allergic reaction to the sound of my voice. I assure you, you’re not alone. You all should start a club.”

“Is everything a joke to you?”

“Funny things are.” Tony grins. Steve glunches at him until Tony subsides. “What do you want me to say, Steve?” he asks softly.

“I don’t know,” Steve says quietly.

“I’d do it again,” Tony says with a sad smile. “And you’d do it again, too. In the end, nothing would change.”

“It could.”

“No, it couldn’t.”

“How would you know? You’re not an evil person, Tony, despite what you want everyone to think.”

“I know I’m not an evil person,” Tony says, which seems to surprise Steve into a fugacious silence. “I’ve made mistakes, yes. But I know I’m not Satan incarnate. If I was, you wouldn’t have fought so hard for me in court, and you wouldn’t be here now. But am I a _good_ person? I don’t know the answer to that. I don’t think you do either.

Steve runs a hand over his face. “I want you to be,” he confesses.

“I want to be a good person too.” Tony smiles humorlessly. “I wanted it very, very badly. And I tried very, very hard to be one. _Too_ hard, I think. And the harder I tried, the more errors I seemed to make, the more people got hurt. And the harder I tried to fix it, the worse it all seemed to get.” Steve takes a deep, shuddering breath, eyes closed. “So, my answer is no.”

“No?”

“I won’t come back,” Tony says simply. “I don’t want to. And honestly, I think you’re all probably better off without me.” Steve says nothing, complexion wan. “Why did you come here, Steve?” Tony asks gently.

Steve opens his eyes, looking at Tony with a cryptic emotion that seems fragile and torn and deep.

“When I came out of the ice,” Steve begins huskily. “I had nothing. No home. No friends. No family. No community. I didn’t belong anywhere. But I had you.” Tony feels a lump rising in his throat. “You gave me a home. You gave me the Avengers. You… you made me feel like I could belong.” Steve’s voice turns raspy, his eyes are red. “You were the best and worst parts of the future, and fighting against you…” He stops for a moment to collect himself. “I wanted to know if there was anything, anything at all that could be salvaged from this, from us.”

Tony’s blue eyes sting. “It might already be too late,” he says. “There are some actions we can’t take back, that we won’t _want _to take back; some differences that might be too far apart to bridge; mistakes that are too terrible to forgive.”

“But they can be.” He hears the wood of the chair creaking as Steve leans forward. “_I_ can. I _have_, Tony.”

“Maybe these particular mistakes _shouldn’t _be forgiven.”

“That’s not your decision to make,” Steve says, voice like steel.

Something wet drips down onto Tony’s hands folded in his lap.

“I got you killed,” Tony says, like he’s confessing a sin to a priest.

Steve gets to his feet and crosses the room so noiselessly that Tony doesn’t realize it until he feels Steve’s hand gripping his shoulder. It feels like benediction, like absolution.

“You didn’t,” Steve says.

“You should want nothing to do with me. You should run as far away from me as possible.”

“But I won’t.”

“I sometimes think my life would be so much easier if you just stood in the corner and look pretty.”

“Tough.”

“After all this time,” Tony says with something like awe, “you can still surprise me with your capacity for forgiveness.”

“It sometimes surprises me too.” Steve tilts Tony’s chin up, fingers swiping the moisture on his cheeks. “I want this, Tony. After all these years, all our history, I don’t think I could bear to leave it like this between us. I want to try, at least. Don’t you?”

“Yeah,” Tony chokes out. He’s sure he looks a sight, sniveling all over the place, but Steve doesn’t seem to care. Tony manages a watery smile. “I want it too.”

…

The next day, Pepper and Rhodey turn up at Tony’s doorstep, luggage in hand.

Tony takes one look at them and says. “The last time I checked, I was a fully functioning and self-supporting adult with extraordinary mental acuity, and thus perfectly capable of navigating my own personal relationships.”

Pepper sniffs. Her long red hair is in curls today, and she shoulders unabashedly past him and into the house, pulling her suitcase behind her. “I don’t think anyone who needs me to remember their own social security number is technically ‘self-supporting’.”

Tony only half-heartedly tries to dissuade them before surrendering to the inevitable. “Hey, Steve!” he calls as they walk into the living room. “Look who turned up!”

Steve sits in one of the leather couches, sketchbook on his lap and charcoal in hand. He looks up with a welcoming smile that stiffens when he sees exactly who Tony’s companions are.

“You seem to have started a trend,” Tony informs him.

“Commander Rogers!” Rhodey says, with an expression of unconvincing surprise. “What an unexpected… pleasure.”

“Colonel Rhodes.” Steve gets to his feet, eyes flicking down to the suitcases. “Tony didn’t mention you were planning to stay.”

“They’re not,” Tony says, giving Rhodey and Pepper stern looks. “They’re visiting. I’m sure Pepper and Rhodey have other businesses to conduct at a place far, far away from here. Don’t you, Pepper? Rhodey?”

“Do we, Rhodey?”

“I don’t recall so, Pepper.”

Tony opens his mouth to very loudly and fervently tell them what he thinks about that when Gerald gambols into the room, a large dead spider in his mouth, which he deposits at Tony’s feet like a sacrifice at an altar. The puppy spies Pepper and Rhodey, then spends the next few minutes giving them a thoroughly welcome greeting.

“He wasn’t that happy to see me yesterday,” Steve notes.

“Must be a good judge of character,” Rhodey says snidely.

Tony awards Steve brownie points for not rising to the bait.

“You’re a pain in my ass,” Tony says to the dead spider.

“You talking to me and Pep, or the dog?”

“Tough choice,” Tony says scornfully. “One kills pests for me. The other two are nosy busy-bodies who can’t leave things well enough alone.”

“Aw.” Pepper coos over the puppy, who soaks up the attention. “Taking to you always makes me feel so valued and appreciated, Tony.”

“Don’t do that,” Tony tells Gerald, who rolls onto his back and bares his stomach for Pepper to scratch. “Don’t get all vainglorious with me just because you managed to get some bird to scratch your itch. It’s cheap and indecorous.”

“Speaking from experience, Tones?” Rhodey says dryly.

“Just because I don’t have the suit with me doesn’t mean I can’t still kick your ass, Rhodes.”

…

Tony finds a moment to pull Steve aside later. “I’m sorry about them.”

They’re sitting facing each other. Apparently, their combined weight is too much for the swing-set, whose mechanical joints squeak in protest, or maybe they just need oiling. The summer air smells of fresh pine and ripe fruit. Above them, the pale blue sky is steadily being enshrouded by a thin veil of pale grey clouds. Pepper is indoors, taking a call from one of SI’s major shareholders. Rhodey is otherwise occupied. Tony has bribed Gerald with the dessert of his choice from the pet bakery if the puppy distracts Rhodey long enough for Tony and Steve to speak alone, a task which Gerald effectuates meritoriously by stealing the homing device for Rhodey’s War Machine armor and running off into the wilderness with it. Tony doesn’t envisage seeing Rhodey or Gerald again for at least a few hours.

“Pepper and Rhodey mean well,” Tony goes on. “They’re just-”

“Protective.” Steve nods. “They’re not my biggest fans, are they?”

“Like Barnes and Wilson are mine?” Tony counters. Steve huffs, but doesn’t refute it. “They’re my friends. My _best _friends.” The lilt of his voice turns affectionate. “They’re pretty much pathologically incapable of not taking my side. Happy-” Tony lets out a hacking cough, and he suddenly sounds like he’s suffering from a hellacious head-cold. “Happy was the same as well.”

They lapse into quietude. A drop of rain lands on Tony’s cheek. He cranes his neck back, looking up with a jaundiced eye at the puffy clouds, a mite greyer than he thinks they were a second before.

“Did you really think I had something to do with it?”

“Hm?” Tony says absently.

“With Hogan’s accident,” Steve says, and Tony’s attention snaps back to the conversation like a rubber band, stinging and smarting. He can tell that this question is one Steve has been marinating in for a long time. Tony wants to give Steve the answer that will make the strained contours of Steve’s features soften, but he’s rather sick of lying to Steve.

“I believed you when you said you didn’t know anything about it,” Tony says, sounding more defensive than warranted.

“But you still had to ask,” Steve says, his features practiced and wooden.

Tony can’t meet his eyes. He abruptly develops an unaccountable fascination with the swing-seat, moving his fingers along the hardened and dried bumps that formed from the unevenly applied coating of baby-blue paint. A chip of blue flakes off and lodges underneath his nail.

“Circumstances required me to think of you as an enemy,” Tony says, in a remote and detached voice that makes him hate himself just a little more. “We were both forced to think that the other was liable to do some pretty crummy things. But I liked to think that even then, I knew you too well for you to lie to my face and be able to get away with it.”

Tony’s gaze is glued to his thumb. Steve says nothing.

“But if you had told me that what was done to Happy was done on your orders-” Tony falters, losing some of the aloofness. “I think I would have believed it. I would have been too afraid that my emotions were clouding my judgement not to.”

Another droplet of rainwater lands on his head, leaving a cold, wet spot on his scalp. Tony rubs at the spot uncomfortably, too cowardly to meet Steve’s gaze, even though he can feel the intensity of the super soldier’s stare lasering a hole right through Tony’s head, like Steve’s eyes have been replaced by repulsor rays.

“Sam once told me that I always saw you through rose-colored glasses,” Steve says, apropos to nothing. “And that it didn’t change the fact that you were a sell-out.”

“Sounds like a hard man to love, your buddy Wilson. He can give Pepper and Rhodey lessons.” Tony scoffs. “You know that before I gave him the shield, Barnes broke into my office on the Helicarrier and did his best to murder me?”

“Well, you did kind of deserve it,” Steve intones.

“Then your girlfriend slapped me.”

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

“Give it another month. I’m sure that’ll change.”

“What makes you so certain?”

“Because it’s _you_. And because it’s _Sharon_.” Tony makes jazz hands. “Every time you two call it quits, saying that it’s final, that it’s over, that _we are never, ever getting back together-_”

“Tony.”

“Sorry.” Tony drops the sing-song voice. “Poor timing. But the point is, every time you two break up and date other people, you always end up crashing right back into each other’s lives. It’s always messy and dramatic and painful for your other girlfriends and her other boyfriends, but it always happens. You’re each other’s endgame.”

A muscle in Steve’s jaw twitches. Tony recognizes the constipated, slightly nauseated expression, and decides to wait him out. Steve has his teeth clenched together like he’s forcibly trying to keep whatever he wants to say in.

“We fought,” Steve says, with an ugly grimace. “Before I left. A lot of nasty things were said from both parties.”

“Married couples fight all the time,” Tony says wisely. “Then afterwards they make up. Or they get couples’ counselling. And a select minority end up suing each other when they can’t agree on who gets what during the divorce, flaunting their private dirty laundry to all and sundry during months of tedious court hearings.”

“Talking to you always makes me feel so optimistic about my life choices.”

“Glad to help.” Tony rubs his hands together. “So, what did you fight about this time?”

“You.”

“What about me?”

“We fought about you.”

“Wow,” Tony says, inappropriately impressed. “I’m ruining your love life when we’re not even in the same country. I had no idea my influence has spread so far.”

“She thinks I’m unhealthily fixated on you because of our past,” Steve says candidly.

“You do have the tendency to unhealthily fixate on your past, that’s true,” Tony agrees serenely. “I don’t feel any different, being the object of your unhealthy fixation.”

“I’m glad to hear that my troubling love life is so amusing to you.”

“Who’s amused? I’m not amused. If anything, I’m disturbed to realize that Namor, Barnes, and I now have something in common. We can be the founding members of a club, get badges and matching T-shirts for all of Steve Roger’s morally dubious formerly best friends of the future.”

Steve makes a frustrated noise in the back of his throat. “Is that the extent of your friendly advice? Snide commentary about my personal relationships?”

“You’re asking me for romantic advice? _Me? _I’ve never had a romantic relationship that lasted more than a few months, you do know that?”

“You might as well be good for something.”

“Have you tried turning it off and on again?” Tony asks earnestly.

“_Stark._”

“Ouch.” Tony exaggeratedly massages his chest, making a wounded face. “Back to last names? I’m hurt, Steven. You’ve hurt me. I thought we were closer than this.”

“I’m going to push you off this swing.”

“No! Don’t!” Tony laughs, drawing his knees to his chest. Steve grabs his calf. The super-soldier’s long fingers wrapping entirely around Tony’s leg. “I’ll tell Pepper!” Tony tattles shamelessly. “She’ll knock your teeth out with her Lamborghinis.”

“The serum will grow them back,” Steve says, but he releases Tony’s leg. The silence between them this time is more congenial and tranquil.

“You don’t go back to someone the way you and Sharon go back to each other if there’s nothing there,” Tony finally says. “Obviously, what you have with her is something you both think is worth fighting for.”

“Like the way you and me keep coming back to each other?”

“Like the way me and you keep coming back to each other.” Tony purposefully misunderstands. “But without sex and love and marriage.”

Steve presses the sole of his shoe on the gravelly front yard and pushes, making the swing sway harder. The squeaky joints (Tony keeps reminding himself to oil them and he keeps forgetting) are rhythmic and lulling. Tony’s almost dozing off to the rocking back-and-forth motion of the swing, arms folded behind his neck, when Steve starts rummaging inside the pockets of his camo jacket and pulls out a bundle of envelopes tied together with twine.

“Here.” Steve hands them over.

Tony glances briefly at his name untidily scrawled on the topmost envelope, recognizes the chicken scratch handwriting, and feels all the blood in his veins turn to ice. His heart seems to stop. His lips move. His voice is barely audible.

“How many people know I’m here?”

“None,” Steve answers, and Tony gives him a sharp look. “I’m not lying. The Avengers knew I was planning to track you down. And some of our old friends wanted to hear from you.”

Tony’s blood thaws – smoothie-like sludge instead of solid ice, his heart pumping sluggishly. “All my friends are here,” he hears himself say. “All two of them. An argument can be made for three.”

Steve touches his wrist, fingers wrapping featherlight around Tony’s pulse. “I think you should read those before you decide for sure,” Steve whispers.

All the blood in Tony’s body is rushing to his brain. His vision is swimming. The motion of the swing makes him feel sick. The coffee, burritos and blueberry smoothie he had for lunch slosh around in his stomach.

The grey clouds cover the sun. It starts drizzling.

Steve pulls Tony off the swing. Even standing on solid land, Tony still feels like the ground is undulating beneath his feet.

“Do you have extra mattresses or something?” Tony hears Steve say, when his ears finally stop buzzing. “We can make a camp-bed. Or I can take the couch. I’m not thrilled about sharing a room with Rhodes or Mrs. Potts, if I’m entirely honest.”

Tony blames the dregs of his disorientation for what comes spewing out of his mouth next. “They’re sleeping with me.”

“What?”

Oops.

Well. No use in any sort of pretense now. Tony meets Steve’s goggling eyes head on and says firmly, with no chance of misinterpretation. “Pepper and Rhodey will be sleeping with me. In both the literal and biblical sense.”

Steve continues to gawk. It stops mizzling. Tony isn’t even lightly sprayed.

“So fickle.” Tony looks mulishly at the grey rainclouds, which as if in response to his words, clear to reveal cheerfully bright blue skies. “I guess it’s true what they say – Nature is a woman.”

“So… you and Colonel Rhodes… and Miss Potts…” Steve seems to be choking on his own tongue. Tony takes pity on him.

“Yes.”

“I… have you… did you… _always_?”

“Not since Happy died.” Tony has to work not to choke on _his_ tongue. It will always be difficult to talk about Happy, doubly so on this topic, no matter how much time has passed.

“And Hogan…”

“Yeah. Him too.”

Tony has done the impossible. He’s rendered Steve Rogers totally silent.

“Do you have a problem with it?” Tony arches an eyebrow, daring him to say yes.

“No,” Steve almost shouts, shaking his head like Gerald shakes off soapy water after a bath. He still looks a bit like he’s been smacked in the face with a picture of Red Skull in a flowery bikini, but the shell-shock is rapidly receding. “No. Of course not, Tony. I… I’m happy with you.”

“Your happiness is appreciated,” Tony says graciously. “But unnecessary. I’m not dating Pepper or Rhodey. And as far as I can deduce, neither of them are interested in dating each other.”

Steve’s face contorts, like he’s just pulled a muscle. “But you’re sleeping together.”

“Steve.” Tony smiles somewhat patronizingly. “Do you need me to explain to you the newfangled custom of the twenty-first century where people have sex without being in a romantic relationship? I can use little words. Draw you a diagram. Give me five minutes and I’ll whip you up a PowerPoint presentation.”

“No!” Steve turns completely red. It’s delightful to watch. “No, that’s not necessary. It… it just took me by surprise…. a lot of surprise.”

“I’m surprised by you as well, Steve,” Tony says playfully. “I mean, everyone knows about you and Sharon. But I always thought… Well. Sam’s objectively a very handsome man, even if his personality could use a bit of work. And all those years fighting the war with James Barnes, old timey soldiers Not-Asking and Not-Telling all over the place.”

“I hate you, Tony.”

“You never looked at the three of them and wondered… or Sharon never suggested… you and Wilson and Barnes never tried to experiment-”

“No, Tony.”

“Never got curious?”

“Please stop.”

“Not even a _little_?”

“I swear to God-”

“What’s going on?” Pepper marches out of the house.

Her soft beige-colored duster coat is knotted around the waist of her white summer dress like a wide sash. She’s in a pair of especially sharp-looking and towering pale lavender heels that Tony suspects she chose for the sole purpose of looming an inch over Steve Rogers. Tony dons his best victimized face. Pepper promptly rounds on Steve with an accusatory look.

“Why were you shouting?” Pepper demands, in a voice that would make drill sergeants cower.

“We were discussing the merits of Steve having a foursome with Carter, Wilson, and Barnes,” Tony informs her conversationally.

“No, we were _not-_”

They’re interrupted once again by a ruckus in the woods. The boughs of a pine tree rustles and out stumbles a muddy Rhodey, metaphorical smoke steaming from his ears, carrying an equally mud-caked Gerald by the scruff of his neck. Every inch of Rhodey’s clothing matches the color of his dark brown skin. Tony imagines that they look like genetically created mutant monsters risen from the depths of a swamp. Their appearance is so alarming that both Steve and Pepper take a step back.

“Did you fall in the lake?” Tony asks in concern. “I didn’t think Gerald could swim.”

“I should have let him drown,” Rhodey snarls, incensed. “You two deserve each other. All cute on the outside, completely depraved on the inside.”

Tony gives Steve a sweet smile, pecks Pepper on the mouth, then minces over to coo over the mud-spattered Gerald with dark glee.

“We’ve created a monster,” Pepper tells Rhodey.

…

Tony dithers and dallies until he starts to feel farcical.

_It’s just words on paper. _He tells himself. _It can’t hurt you._

In the privacy of his bedroom that night, while Rhodey is in the shower and Pepper is brushing her teeth, he eyeballs the stack of envelopes sitting on his bedside like it’s a poisonous viper coiled and ready to strike. He’s abruptly stricken by the simultaneous, antithetical urges to burn the lot of it; and stick them under his pillow for safekeeping, like a child hoarding a secret, treasured possession.

The sound of running water from the bathroom cuts off. Rhodey’s words are muffled, but Pepper’s bell-like laughter rings out loud and clear.

The rough twine is tied in a basic square knot, courtesy of Steve Rogers’ boy-scout days. Tony’s hands don’t shake or fumble. Clint’s handwriting on the topmost envelope draws his eyes like a giant flashing neon sign. Below that there’s the unique texture of parchment and Thor’s large looping calligraphy, written with strong-smelling ink and using what seems to be an old-fashioned quill tip. Peter’s narrow and slanted penmanship beneath that.

Tony pulls off the tape sealing Clint’s letter. The sharp edges of the envelope slices shallowly into his thumb and leaves a tiny blot of red on the paper. Blood wells up from the thin cut and beads up on his skin. He sticks the digit into his mouth and sucks, tasting copper.

_Tony,_

_I don’t even know why I’m writing this. I don’t even know if you’ll bother reading this at all or just chuck it in the dustbin. Either way, I’m going to lay it all out for you._

_You’re an ass._

_I’m telling you this just in case you don’t remember our last conversation._

_I don’t trust a lot of people, even people on the Avengers, but I trusted you. The Avengers were like my messed-up, unconventional family. You were like my messed-up, unconventional brother. And when I came back from the dead to see how you screwed us all up, tore my family apart, and got Cap killed over some stupid piece of paper, it pissed me off. It pissed me off that I wasn’t there to stop you – both of you. It pissed me off that I was so wrong about you._

_I’m still pissed off, in case you haven’t gathered._

_But for ten years, we were friends, weren’t we? Close friends. And I’m learning the hard way that you can still miss someone you’re pissed at._

_Life would be a lot easier for me if I could just stop caring on command._

_Did you see me at your trial? I don’t know if you deserved exile, Tony. I still don’t know. But I didn’t feel as vindicated as I thought I would. And it still didn’t change anything. It didn’t change the fact that our ‘family’ was torn apart like cotton candy. It didn’t change the fact that superheroes still don’t trust each other. It didn’t heal the damage the Skrulls did. It doesn’t magically make anything better or just like old times._

_Everything’s changed now. I can’t get my bearings. I still can’t wrap my head around it all._

_Cap isn’t Cap anymore. He’s off leading his secret ops team. Barnes is Captain America. On my worst days, I like to blame you for all of that, even though I know it’s not quite fair._

_But Bobbi’s alive._

_My wife is alive._

_Things between us are different now. Not Bobbi. Bobbi’s not different. She doesn’t remember being taken, not really. From her perspective, she hasn’t been gone at all. She just woke up one day to find that years had passed._

_Our marriage is different because I’m different._

_I thought she was dead. I’ve dated other women and tried to move on from her. I’ve changed. I’ve died._

_So, yeah. It’s been an adjustment. But we’re making it work._

_Cap says he’s tracked you down. I don’t know if that’s true. No one knows where you are. No one’s seen you since the day of the trial. A lot of people think you’re dead. I hope that’s not true, Tony. I’m still pissed at you, but I never wanted you dead._

_Talk to Cap. Try not to kill each other. He doesn’t say, but everyone can tell that he misses you loads. I remember how wrecked you were when I first saw you after Cap died. You want to fix things between the two of you as badly as he does._

_So, don’t screw it up._

_Write back if you feel like it. Or call. I haven’t changed my personal phone number._

_Just let me know once in a while that you’re still alive._

_Clint._

The script is erratic and nigh illegible at some places where Clint must have struggled to write them. Tony smooths out the creases of the lined notepaper, refolds them, and tucks them back into their envelope. He feels suddenly enervated, wanting nothing more than to lie down on the mattress, pull the duvet over his face to block out the rest of the real world, and drift off to dreamless sleep. He doesn’t have the zeal or the verve to read through what Thor or Peter or anyone else has to say to him – whether they be words of clemency or choler. He wants to let the feelings and emotions brought to the surface after reading Clint’s letter be tomorrow’s problem.

The bathroom door opens and Pepper steps out in a set of vividly pink pajamas – almost fuchsia really – that clashes magnificently with her flaming red curls. The sleepwear is obviously too big for her – the collar slipping down to expose the sharp angles of her collarbones and a bare freckled shoulder, the waistband slipping dangerously low, hanging precariously on her hips. Tony feels his breath catch, because the jammies that are too big on Pepper would be just the right size on, let’s say, a stocky and muscular former boxing champion with a clandestine predilection for unironically pink men’s PJs.

“You’re wearing that?” Tony asks hoarsely, the wind expelled from his lungs like he’s just been sucker-punched.

He must lose track of time, because he blinks and Pepper is standing right in front of him, barely an inch of space between them. He reaches out, touches the hem of the pink sleepshirt, pinching the thin cotton fabric between his fingers.

Pepper’s hands find Tony’s own, traveling up his forearms, biceps, shoulders, stopping at his neck and digging her fingers into the tense knot of his corded muscles, kneading the stiff tendons at the junction of his shoulders and neck. Tony’s entire body shudders. He closes his stinging eyes, leans forward and rests his forehead against Pepper’s chest. Pepper Potts is all soft curves and pink jammies and slender wrists. Pepper Potts is diamond-hard eyes and spine of steel and heart of gold. Pepper Potts is a contradiction and a brain teaser and an imbroglio and Tony can spend the rest of his days trying to puzzle her out and die a happy man.

Hah. Happy.

Pepper Potts in Happy Hogan’s pajamas makes Tony feel like he’s bleeding and injured and _weak_.

“I miss him too,” Pepper whispers into his dyed blond hair. It’s Pepper Potts’ husband that is dead, not Tony’s, and yet it’s Pepper who’s stroking his head like he’s a very young child in need of consoling. It’s Pepper Potts who’s a billion – no, a trillion times stronger than Tony can ever hope to be.

Tony wants to sob. He keeps waiting for the day when thinking of Happy finally stops feeling like he’s acquired another set of shrapnel inching their way towards his heart, cutting into his tissues and muscles and vital internal organs. He’s still waiting. He’s still mourning Happy. He thinks he’s going to be mourning Happy forever.

Tony knows that Pepper and Happy used to do their own laundry separately, because they were both inordinately pernickety over what kind of detergents they liked and hated getting the two different scents mixed up. It was something that tickled Tony and Rhodey to no end.

Happy’s pajamas still smell like his favorite laundry detergent – cleanliness and aloe. It’s a cheap brand that Tony can’t remember off the top off his head. Tony wonders if Pepper still keeps all of her husband’s clothes, if she can bear to throw any of them away, if they’re gathering dust in taped over boxes in the storage closet, or are they still hung and folded in the wardrobe, if she washes them periodically so that they still retain Happy’s smell. Tony visualizes Pepper and Rhodey sorting through Happy’s clothes, deciding which to keep for themselves and which to put away, and feels a rush of shameful envy and simultaneous guilty relief.

Pepper’s fingers leave his hair, skimming down the side of his face, the shell of his ears, his forehead and brows. Tony’s hands fall to Pepper’s hips, wandering up to rest against the soft bare skin of her stomach and waist. Pepper kisses the corners of his eyes, where he knows lines are deepening into the beginnings of crow’s feet. Her fingertips skim over the bridge of his nose, his cheekbones, one fingernail catching on his lower lip.

Pepper straddles him, sitting in his lap and hugging his sides with her thighs. Tony pushes up her pink sleepshirt, mouthing upwards along her uncovered torso, cupping her breasts and taking a rosy pink bud into his mouth, worrying it gently with his teeth. Pepper hums in approval, tracing circles against his shoulder-blades.

Tony pulls back after a few moments, surveying his handiwork. Pepper’s breasts heaves, pebbling and glistening wetly. She has her head thrown back, face flushed, green eyes blazing like twin comets, glorious scarlet hair tumbling magnificently down her shoulders.

The light from the bathroom falls on them. Rhodey steps out. Behind Rhodey, Tony can see the steam still fogging up the sink mirror. Rhodey’s clad in only a towel around his waist, reams of peaty brown skin on display. He’s in mid-motion of toweling off his hair, but he ceases when he sees them, Pepper in Tony’s lap, her pink sleepshirt hiked up to expose her breasts. Tony meets Rhodey’s eyes, then, not breaking eye contact, very deliberately starts to grind against Pepper. Pepper lets her sleepshirt fall back down, raking her sharp fingernails up and down Tony’s back, so hard he can feel the bite of it through the material of his jammies.

Eyes dark and smoldering, arousal tenting the towel around his waist, Rhodey nonetheless – with more aplomb that Tony can claim to have in that same situation – resumes drying his hair, calmly hangs up both his towels to dry, then joins them on the bed.

…

As much as Tony opines that they would like to, Rhodey and Pepper can’t actually chaperone his and Steve’s every interaction twenty-four seven – not with Rhodey’s commitment to the USAF and SI’s board of directors breathing down Pepper’s neck.

So, they leave after staying a few days, tag-teaming to give Steve the shovel talk right before their departure.

Then it’s just Tony and Steve and Gerald, rattling around in the cabin, without Pepper and Rhodey around to act as buffers.

They coexist.

More or less peacefully.

With a minimum quantum of shouting.

It isn’t anything resembling the time they lived together in the Avengers Mansion, sleeping just down the hall from each other and hanging out at all hours of the day and night in the library and TV room and the kitchen and the gym and the lab.

The cabin doesn’t have a library or gym or TV room, for instance.

They _do _sleep just down the hall from each other.

This is not at all like the times when Steve used to join Tony in his labs, drawing in his sketchbook while the CEO brainstormed and tinkered away; when Steve coaxed Tony from the labs during one of his frenetic engineering binges for a bite to eat; when Tony would stumble into the kitchen, bleary-eyed and half-asleep, to see Steve already waiting for him at the island counter, fresh from his morning run and shower, plating up a piping hot breakfast while a freshly brewed cup of Tony’s favorite coffee still steamed; when they sparred in the gym, Tony in his armor to give Steve a fair challenge; when they’d wrestle over the TV remote.

There’s an invisible but omnipresent mantle of awkwardness and rigidity in their exchanges, dodging in their wake. A fragile and structurally unsound truce silently drawn up between them, liable to shatter at the most infinitesimal intrusion. Decorum and civil formality imposing itself where it is neither wanted nor welcome.

It’s very tiring. Tiptoeing around someone else in Tony’s own home.

This dicey and unspoken armistice lasts for all of a week before it pops like a shimmering soap bubble floating unwisely close to Gerald’s impish paws.

Looking back, Tony doesn’t even remember what set them off.

One moment, they’re settling down for dinner – takeaway Chinese – and Steve asks about Tony’s work. It’s the same banal, trite small talk they’ve been mindlessly subjecting themselves to for the past seven days. But something about their hackneyed and platitudinous back-and-forth makes Tony’s hackles rise. He spits out something angry. Steve returns fire. And the next thing he knows, both men are on their feet, vociferating at the top of their lungs.

The rest of the fight after that is a livid red haze. Tony thinks he might have thrown his Char Kway Teow at Steve. Steve holds fast to his moral high ground and doesn’t throw anything back.

But there’s one part that Tony recollects with crystal clarity.

“You tried to kill me!” Tony screams at Steve. “Civilians had to stop you from lopping my head off with your shield! You had me defenseless and powerless and you beat me halfway to death with your bare hands! You would have killed me!”

Steve leaves after that, his face wet with what Tony initially thinks is sweat but eventually realizes are tears.

He made Steve cry.

And he thought he couldn’t feel like a shittier human being than before.

Tony tidies up their mess in the kitchen, binning the leftovers and the takeaway carton boxes, appetite thoroughly gone. He feels sick and shaky. Steve’s motorbike is gone from the driveway. That’s probably the last time he’ll ever voluntarily seek out Tony again and their last conversation is a screaming match where Tony accused him of attempted murder.

Except it’s not their last conversation, because Steve comes back. Miserable, red-eyed, with dried blood caked over his knuckles where the serum has already knitted his skin back together – he looks like a hot mess, but he still comes back.

Tony doesn’t expect him to.

They try again.

They dedicate a keen effort to sorting through their issues, making fairly good headway until the next volatile argument explodes between them. There’s just as much shouting as the first time. _Quid pro quo – _Steve is the one to make Tony cry this time. Steve leaves. Then he comes back again.

Two steps forward. Three steps back.

Rinse. Repeat.

They both say some hateful, virulent things they don’t mean in the heat of the moment, and there are floods of manly tears from both sides. Nevertheless, slowly but surely, they get better at talking to each other instead of _at _each other. It’s a process that would probably be substantially accelerated by seeking counselling, something which Pepper brings up once, and Tony responds about how he thinks that drowning on dry land sounds more pleasant.

Steve goes longer without storming off in an ill temper. He always comes back.

Tony doesn’t know why.

He can make an educated guess.

But he doesn’t want to.

And just when the latest turmoil in Tony Stark’s life only barely starts making sense, Nick Fury shows up on his doorstep with a summons.

…

“Still here, I see.”

Nick Fury puffs on his joint. The end of his cigarette glows red and smoke plumes thickly in the air. Night is falling quickly, the daylight fading around them. Dressed all in black, Nick Fury blends in with the lengthening shadows and Tony can only pinpoint his position by the glowing red laser-like dot of his cigarette. The air is filled with the scent of burning tobacco. Tony clears his throat, waving the grey fumes out of his face. Fury looks exactly the same, as he always does – a trench coat over a standard SHIELD uniform similar to the one Tony wore during his days as Director of SHIELD.

“Yep, still here.” Nick grinds the burning end of his ciggy against the wooden wall, leaving an ashy burn mark against the baby-blue paint. “No need to sound so down in the dumps about it. I’ll be out of your hair soon enough. Just wanted a word before I leave. File a complaint with the welcoming committee.”

Tony leans against the metal frame of the swing. The sky is dusky purple. The moon hands luminous and incandescent above them. As he watches, stars blink into view, forming patchy constellations.

“If you expected a homecoming party, you should have called ahead,” Tony says.

“I was a bit pressed for time,” Nick says brusquely. “The world doesn’t stop needing to be saved just cause you two clowns ran off into the Canadian sunset together to play house.”

Tony tilts his head toward the cabin’s open windows, through which he can hear Steve watching the TV at an aggressively loud volume. “He turn you down?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe he doesn’t need to be the one to save the world this time.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. All I know is that I ain’t never seen the likes of what’s happening now before. I know we need the best on this. And with Reed Richards, Charles Xavier, Stephen Strange, Black Bolt, and Namor all gone rogue, pickings are slim.”

Tony closes his eyes. “The Illuminati.”

“I figured you’d know about them,” Nick mocks.

“It’s that bad?”

“Worse. I’ve been a lot of fucked-up, no-win, doomsday-esque situations – fought my way out of more of them than I can count – and I’m telling you now, this could be it. This is the worst one yet.”

“Worse than Skrulls?”

“Worse. Worse than the Registration, even.”

Tony smiles bitterly. “Somehow, I have trouble imagining that.”

“Then you’d best take my word for it,” Nick says. Inside, Steve changes the channel from a screechy horror movie to what sounds like a nature documentary. “When I said we needed the best on this, I was talking about you too, you know.”

“And I’ll tell you the same thing I told Steve when he showed up here that first day and offered me a pardon,” Tony says briskly. “I’m not coming back. Whatever’s going on with these ‘incursions’, the Avengers will solve it without my help and be better off for it.”

“I’m not entirely surprised.” Nick sounds insouciant, for all that he keeps expounding on the dire global threat about to end life as they all know it. “But you know what _did _surprise me, Stark? Rogers. I was so sure he’d jump on the chance to get back into the fight. Never thought he was physically capable of turning his back on a righteous cause and burying his head in the metaphorical Canadian sand.”

Tony is squeezing his eyes shut tightly enough that the backs of his eyelids turn blood-red. He tastes blood in his mouth and realizes he’s biting down on his tongue hard enough to break skin, trying to keep silent.

“There’s no use dropping hints with _me_,” Tony says, swallowing the taste of copper coating his tongue. “I can’t control what Steve does. Worked out extraordinarily badly for me the last time I tried.” A breeze picks up, bringing a smell of fresh pine and sickly-sweet maple. He turns his head, angling his body so he feels the wind against his face. “There’s nothing keeping him here.”

There’s a thick, poignant silence.

“There’s you,” Nick says.

Tony’s eyes snap open. He looks at Nick wildly, irascibly, almost terror-stricken.

“I never asked him to stay,” Tony says. “I never asked for it.”

“Come on, Stark.” Nick crosses his arms and leans against the wall in an artificially lackadaisical manner. “You must have known. At the very least, you must have already guessed. You’d have to be dense as a brick not to.” Tony shakes his head mutely. “You’re not a stupid man, Stark. Do us both a favor and stop pretending to be one.”

Inside, the television has stopped on a news channel. Tony is hyperaware of the open window just a few feet in front of him, and the possibility that Steve can hear their every word with his serum enhanced super-hearing.

Fury is right. Tony can guess.

He just doesn’t want to.

“I didn’t ask for it,” Tony says again.

“You didn’t have to ask, Stark,” Nick says gruffly. “You just have to _exist_. That’s how it works.”

…

Steve is watching an episode of Dog Whisperer. Gerald barks madly at the screen as Caesar Millan approaches a hostile Labrador while the cream-coated animal is eating, and promptly gets bitten for his troubles.

“What an idiot,” Tony says disdainfully.

Steve sits in Tony’s fancy lounge chair, TV remote in hand, expression too schooled and appearing inordinately interested in Caesar Millan’s bloody hand for him not to have at least overheard some of what Fury has said to Tony. They can both continue to play dumb and ignore the elephant in the room for as long as possible, or Tony can stop being a pussy and finally confront him. Tony crosses the room to stand in front of Steve, shoving at his shoulder in a tacit request for him to make room.

“It’s not your turn tonight,” Steve says, but he budges over all the same.

Tony squishes himself between Steve and the armrest, ending up half-sprawled on Steve’s lap, his head resting on Steve’s chest. He can feel Steve’s heart hammering against his skin. Steve seems to have stopped breathing. He’s a solid block of heat wrapped around Tony’s side and back.

Steve flicks through a handful of channels, stopping at some kind of sitcom.

Tony pats Steve’s cheek. He wants Steve’s attention on _him_, damnit! Steve looks at him curiously. Tony presses their lips together.

Steve’s lips are soft but peeling. He hasn’t been drinking enough water. Tony keeps his mouth closed. The kiss is almost chaste, really. For some reason, he thought it would feel… different.

Not that it isn’t nice. Because it is. Very nice. Very… sweet. It feels a bit like kissing Pepper or Rhodey or Happy – warm and safe and slow, but not quite right.

Steve’s lips are unresponsive beneath Tony’s. But when Tony starts to pull away, Steve unfreezes like someone hit the ‘play’ button on a video, muscles flexing as he bodily hauls Tony to straddle his lap. Steve squeezes Tony’s ass, grinding their hips together. Tony gasps out of surprise more than anything else, and Steve takes the opportunity to claim his lips again, plundering Tony’s mouth, one hand gripping Tony’s hair to tilt his head however Steve likes it.

It’s not chaste.

There’s a lot of tongue.

Steve must be hell-a good at repression and sublimation.

Tony’s lips tingle, feeling swollen and bruised. Steve mouths down the long elegant column of Tony’s neck in a warm, slick trail, sucking at Tony’s pulse-point and making him shudder. Tony’s cock jumps.

“I can’t-” Steve murmurs into his skin.

Tony hears it and flinches, tries to pull away, but Steve wraps his long fingers around both of Tony’s wrists, keeping Tony right where he is. Steve’s other hand slips down the waistband of Tony’s jeans and boxers, mouth still working over Tony’s neck. Tony squirms. He can feel Steve’s hardness against his thigh. The uncomfortable tightness of Tony’s jeans is bordering on the edge of painful. Heat coils in Tony’s lower belly, building up to dizzying heights.

“Getting some mixed signals here, Cap.” Tony feels light-headed, exposing his neck to give Steve better access.

With visible effort and undisguised reluctance, Steve removes his mouth from Tony’s neck and pulls his hand out of Tony’s pants. Tony almost whines at the loss. Steve still keeps Tony’s wrists in his grip though, probably to stop Tony from legging it. The thought does occur to Tony briefly. It’s possible he didn’t quite think this through.

The azure of Steve’s eyes are nearly swallowed up by his dilated pupils. But apart from that, he looks almost unfairly put together, whereas Tony is sure he looks like a debauched mess.

Steve’s Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows, and when he speaks, his voice is rough. “What are we, Tony?”

In just four words, Steve kills Tony’s erection entirely. Tony was at least hoping that they’d go a few days before he’d have to address this. But no such luck. Trust Steve Rogers to ruin all of his plans.

Tony tugs experimentally at his wrists, but Steve’s hold doesn’t give.

“Oh, no,” Steve says, wrapping his other arm around Tony’s waist for good measure. “You’re not running away from this discussion, Tony. Answer the question.”

Tony ducks his head. “What do you want from me, Steve?”

“I don’t want anything you don’t want to give me,” Steve says stiffly.

Tony chuckles sourly. “Trust me, Steve. No one can make me do anything that I don’t want to do.” He rolls his hips pointedly, feeling Steve’s thigh muscles flex and jump beneath him. “I know you want me, Steve.”

“I do.” Steve’s frosty tone is at direct odds to the way the arm around Tony’s waist pulls him closer, fingers digging into Tony’s hip convulsively, hard enough to leave bruises even through his clothing. “I want to bend you over this chair and make you take my cock. I want to drag you into my bedroom and fuck you through the mattress. I want to have you against the wall until you can’t walk without limping.”

Tony shudders, eyes going half-lidded. “Then why don’t you?”

“Because I don’t know what would happen next.”

“And they call you a tactical genius. If you need detailed instructions, I can draw you up a flowchart and a fifteen-page manual.”

“God-damnit, Tony! _Look at me!_”

Disquieted by Steve’s harsh tone, Tony’s electric blue eyes jump up to meet his. Steve stares at him, face writ large with lust and desire, but also pain and desperation.

“I can’t-” Steve cuts himself off, swallowing spasmodically. “I can’t sleep with you if it’s just sex, Tony. I want more than that. I’ve always wanted more than that. I’m not like Pepper or Rhodes or Happy.”

Tony shrinks away from his intent gaze. “It was never just sex with them.”

“Then what was it then?” Steve asks plaintively.

“It was-” A lump rises in Tony’s throat. His eyes burn. “It was about trust.” His voice wobbles. “About being vulnerable and open with the people that I trusted. It was about connection and safety and intimacy. It was never about being in love with someone.”

“Did they want it to be?” Steve asks acutely.

Tony’s silence is all the answer he needs.

“Tony-”

Steve’s arm loosens around his waist. Tony makes a bid for freedom. Both men lose their balance and topple over, tumbling in a heap onto the blue-carpeted floor with a muffled _thump_. They manage to avoid major injury, but they knock over the TV remote as well, and Gerald seizes the narrow window of opportunity. The puppy pounces, fastens his jaws around the controller, gnawing. The screen, playing an advertisement for KFC’s chicken and waffle meal set, starts blaring at an unbearably loud volume. Tony wrests the remote from Gerald’s slobbery jaws and presses the red off button. The screen turns black and falls blessedly silent.

“I’m going to leave you at a shelter and replace you with a less troublesome model,” Tony says to Gerald, who barks joyously, eyes fixed on the slimy controller in Tony’s hand.

The interruption is like a cold bucket of water, disrupting their reverie. Tony looks at Steve, who has turned away, his shoulders set, hands on his hips. He can’t see Steve’s face, but he can sense the super soldier all but physically withdrawing from him. A yawning chasm stretches out between them, and if Tony doesn’t do anything to close the gap now –

“You told me once.” Tony fiddles with the TV remote just for something to do with his hands. “That being injected with the super soldier serum was the worst pain in your life.”

There’s a pause. He can tell that Steve is wrong-footed by the non sequitur. “Like needles were being jabbed in every part of my body,” Steve says. “Every cell was being rewritten. As if every bone was being broken and fused into glass. I didn’t know pain like that existed before then.”

Tony sets down the TV remote safely on top of a shelf. Gerald paces in sulky circles at his feet. “Imagine that pain multiplied by a thousand,” Tony says. “That was what it felt like when Happy died.”

Finally, Steve turns to face him, expression gentle and compassionate. “Tony-”

Tony doesn’t look at him. He’s staring at a vague point somewhere in the distance, blue eyes dull and hollow, his mind miles and miles away. “We had so many close calls before that,” he says. “So many. Pepper had a miscarriage because she was tortured by one of my enemies. The baby – the baby could have been mine. Then Rhodey – God, Rhodey. He was injured so badly he was in literal pieces. _I literally had to build him a new body_.”

“I understand,” Steve says quietly.

“No,” Tony says, not unkindly. “You don’t. You’ve never needed anyone the way I’ve needed them. When Happy died – that pain and the grief – I never want to go through that again. It was worse than dying. The worst thing I’ve ever gone through in my entire life.”

“I’m sorry.”

Tony turns to look at him, still speaking in that horribly empty tone. “I don’t fall in love with the people I can’t bear to lose, Steve.” A single tear slips down his cheek. “It hurts too much.”

Steve moves closer, so close Tony can see his every blond lash. Steve’s warm breath fans over Tony’s cheeks. Tony wants to back away, but he’s rooted to the spot, like his feet are stapled down.

Steve wipes away his tear. “And me?”

“Futurist,” Tony reminds him, the timbre of his voice sub-fusc. “I’ve always known I was going to lose you – to death or to your morals… my lack of them.”

“You haven’t.” Steve’s big hands come up to cradle Tony’s face. “_You haven’t_, Tony. I’m still here. You haven’t lost me. I came back. I’ll always come back to you.” He presses a kiss to Tony’s forehead. “There’s nothing you can do that will make me give up on you.”

Tony lets himself lean into the other man’s strength. “Oh, I’m sure I can find a loophole to that.”

“No loophole,” Steve says obdurately. “You’ll have me as long as you want me.”


End file.
